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1 


One of Cleopatra’s Nights 

and 

Other Fantastic Romances 









TRAMSLATED 6Y LAECADIoMtARrA 


OAE OF 

CLEOPATRA’S AieMTS 

AMD 

OTMER FAMTA5TIC ROMAMCE5 
BY 

Tmeopmile Gautier 



PUBLISMED BY BREMTAMO’S 
AT UMIOM SQUARE, MEW YORK 



Copyright, rSgo, by 

WORTHINGTON CO. 

Copyright, 1899, by 

BRENTANO’S 





CONTENTS 


PACE 

— -To THE Reader ix 

One of Cleopatra’s Nights .... 3 

Clarimonde 81 

Arria Marcella . 153 

The Mummy’s Foot 221 

Omphale : A Rococo Story .... 249 

King Candaules 273 

Addenda 383 



The love that caught strange light from 
death's own eyes. 

And filled death's lips with fiery words and 
sighs, 

And, half asleep, let feed from veins of his 

Her close, red, warm snake' s-mouth, Egyp^ 
tian-wise : 

And that great night of love more strange 
than this. 

When she that made the whole world's bale 
and bliss 

Made king of the whole world's desire 
a slave 

And killed him in mid-kingdom with a kiss. 

Swinburne. 

“ Memorial verses on the death of Thtophile Gautier y 



TO THE READER 


The stories composing this volume have 
been selected for translation from the two 
volumes of romances and tales by Th^ophile 
Gautier respectively entitled Nouvelles and 
Romans et Contes. They afford in the orig- 
inal many excellent examples of that pecul- 
iar beauty of fancy and power of painting 
with words which made Gautier the most 
brilliant literary artist of his time. No 
doubt their warmth of coloring has been im- 
poverished and their fantastic enchantment 
weakened by the process of transformation 
into a less voluptuous tongue ; yet enough 
of the original charm remains, we trust, to 
convey a just idea of the French author's 
rich imaginative power and ornate luxuri- 
ance of style. 

The verses of Swinburne referring to the 
witchery of the novelette which opens the 
volume, and to the peculiarly sweet and 


TO THE READER 


Strange romance which follows, sufficiently 
indicate the extraordinary art of these tales. 
At least three of the stories we have at- 
tempted to translate rank among the most 
remarkable literary productions of the cen- 
tury. 

These little romances are characterized, 
however, by merits other than those of mere 
literary workmanship; they are further re- 
markable for a wealth of erudition — pictur- 
esque learning, we might say — which often 
lends them an actual archaeologic value, like 
the paintings of some scholarly artist, some 
AlmaTadema, who with fair magic of color- 
blending evokes for us eidolons of ages van- 
ished and civilizations passed away. 

Thus one finds in the delightful fantasy of 
Arria Marcella not only a dream of “ Pom- 
peiian Days,” pictured with an idealistic 
brilliancy beyond the art of Coomans, but 
a rich knowledge, likewise, of all that fas- 
cinating lore gleaned by antiquarian research 
amid the ashes of the sepultured city — a 
knowledge enriched in no small degree by 
local study, and presented with a descriptive 
power finely strengthened by personal ob- 


TO THE READER 


XI 


servation. It is something more than the 
charming imagination of a poetic dreamer 
which paints for us the blue sea “ unrolling 
its long volutes of foam " upon a beach as 
black and smooth as sifted charcoal; the 
fissured summit of Vesuvius, out-pouring 
white threads of smoke from its crannies 
“ as from the orifices of a perfuming pan ; ” 
and the far-purple hills “ with outlines 
voluptuously undulating, like the hips of a 
woman.” 

And throughout these romances one finds 
the same evidences of archaeologic study, of 
artistic observation, of imagination fostered 
by picturesque fact. The glory of the Greek 
kings of Lydia glows goldenly again in the 
pages of Le Roi Candaule ; the massive 
gloom and melancholy weirdness of ancient 
Egypt is reflected as in a necromancer’s mir- 
ror throughout Une Nuit de Cleopdtre. It 
is in the Egyptian fantasies, perhaps, that 
the author’s peculiar descriptive skill ap- 
pears to most advantage; the still fresh hues 
of the hierophantic paintings, the pictured 
sarcophagi, and the mummy-gilding seem 
to meet the reader’s eye with the gratifica- 


TO THE READER 


xii 

tion of their bright contrasts; a faint per- 
fume of unknown balm seems to hover over 
the open pages; and mysterious sphinxes 
appear to look on “ with that undefinable 
rose-granite smile that mocks our modern 
wisdom." 

Excepting Omphale and La Morte A mo- 
reuse, the stories selected for translation are 
mostly antique in composition and coloring ; 
the former being Louis-Quinze, the latter 
mediaeval rather than aught else. But all 
alike frame some exquisite delineation of 
young love-fancies; some admirable picture 
of what Gautier in the Histoire du Roman- 
tisme has prettily termed " the graceful suc- 
cubi that haunt the happy slumbers of 
youth." 

And what dreamful student of the Beauti- 
ful has not been once enamoured of an Arria 
Marcella, and worshipped on the altar of his 
heart those ancient gods " who loved life 
and youth and beauty and pleasure "? How 
many a lover of mediaeval legend has in 
fancy gladly bartered the blood of his veins 
for some phantom Clarimonde ? What true 
artist has not at some time been haunted by 


TO THE READER 


xiii 


the image of a Nyssia, fairer than all daugh- 
ters of men, lovelier than all fantasies real- 
ized in stone — a Pygmalion-wrought marble 
transmuted by divine alchemy to a being of 
opalescent flesh and ichor-throbbing veins ? 

Gautier was an artist in the common ac- 
ceptation of the term, as well as a poet and a 
writer of romance ; and in those pleasant frag- 
ments of autobiography scattered through 
the Histoire du Roinantisme we find his aver- 
ment that at the commencement of the Ro- 
mantic movement of 1830 he was yet unde- 
cided whether to adopt literature or art as a 
profession; but, finding it “ easier to paint 
with words than with colors,” he finally de- 
cided upon the pen as his weapon in the 
new warfare against ” the hydra of classi- 
cism with its hundred peruked heads.” As 
a writer, however, he remained the artist 
still. His pages were pictures, his sentences 
touches of color; he learned, indeed, to 
” paint with words” as no other writer of 
the century has done ; and created a power- 
ful impression, not only upon the literature 
of his day, but even, it may be said, upon 
the language of his nation. 


XIV 


TO THE READER 


Possessed of an almost matchless imagina- 
tive power, and a sense of beauty as refined 
as that of an antique sculptor, Gautier so 
perfects his work as to leave nothing for the 
imagination of his readers to desire. He in- 
sists that they should behold the author’s 
fancy precisely as the author himself fancied 
it with all its details; the position of ob- 
jects, the effects of light, the disposition of 
shadow, the material of garments, the tex- 
ture of stuffs, the interstices of stonework, 
the gleam of a lamp upon sharp angles of 
furniture, the whispering sound of trailing 
silk, the tone of a voice, the expression of a 
face — all is visible, audible, tangible. You 
can find nothing in one of his picturesque 
scenes which has not been treated with a 
studied accuracy of minute detail that leaves 
no vacancy for the eye to light upon, no 
hiatus for the imagination to supply. This 
is the art of painting carried to the highest 
perfection in literature. It is not wonderful 
that such a man should at times sacrifice 
style to description ; and he has himself ac- 
knowledged an occasional abuse of violent 
coloring. 


TO THE READER 


XV 


Naturally, a writer of this kind pays small 
regard to the demands of prudery. His 
work being that of the artist, he claims the 
privilege of the sculptor and the painter in 
delineations of the beautiful. A perfect 
human body is to him the most beautiful of 
objects. He does not seek to veil its love- 
liness with cumbrous drapery; he delights 
to behold it and depict it in its “ divine 
nudity;” he views it with the eyes of the 
Corinthian statuary or the Pompeiian fresco- 
painter; he idealizes even the ideal of 
beauty: under his treatment flesh becomes 
diaphanous, eyes are transformed to orbs of 
prismatic light, features take tints of celes- 
tial loveliness. Like the Hellenic sculptor, 
he is not satisfied with beauty of form alone, 
but must add a vital glow of delicate color- 
ing to the white limbs and snowy bosom of 
marble. 

It is the artist, therefore, who must judge 
of Gautier's creations. To the lovers of the 
loveliness of the antique world, the lovers 
of physical beauty and artistic truth, of the 
charm of youthful dreams and young passion 
in its blossoming, of poetic ambitions and 


XVI 


TO THE READER 


the sweet pantheism that finds all Nature 
vitalized by the Spirit of the Beautiful — to 
such the first English version of these grace- 
ful fantasies is offered in the hope that it 
may not be found wholly unworthy of the 
original. 

L. H. 

New Orleans, 1882. 


One of Cleopatra’s Nights 



ONE or 
CLEOPATRAS 
NIGHTS 


CHAPTER I 

Nineteen hundred years ago from the 
date of this writing, a magnificently gilded 
and painted cangia was descending the Nile 
as rapidly as fifty long, flat oars, which 
seemed to crawl over the furrowed water 
like the legs of a gigantic scarabaeus, could 
impel it. 

This cangia was narrow, long, elevated at 
both ends in the form of a new moon, ele- 
gantly proportioned, and admirably built 
for speed; the figure of a ram’s head, sur- 
mounted by a golden globe, armed the point 
of the prow, showing that the vessel be 
longed to some personage of royal blood. 


4 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


In the centre of the vessel arose a flat- 
roofed cabin — a sort of naos^ or tent of 
honor — colored and gilded, ornamented with 
palm-leaf mouldings, and lighted by four 
little square windows. 

Two chambers, both decorated with hiero- 
glyphic paintings, occupied the horns of the 
crescent. One of them, the larger, had a 
second story of lesser height built upon it, 
like the chateaux gaillards of those fantastic 
galleys of the sixteenth century drawn by 
Della-Bella; the other and smaller chamber, 
which also served as a pilot-house, was sur- 
mounted with a triangular pediment. 

In lieu of a rudder, two immense oars, ad- 
justed upon stakes decorated with stripes of 
paint, which served in place of our modern 
row-locks, extended into the water in rear 
of the vessel like the webbed feet of a swan ; 
heads crowned with pshents, and bearing 
the allegorical horn upon their chins, were 
sculptured upon the handles of these huge 
oars, which were manoeuvred by the pilot as 
he stood upon the deck of the cabin above. 

He was a swarthy man, tawny as new 
bronze, with bluish surface gleams playing 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA'S NIGHTS 


5 


over his dark skin; long oblique eyes, hair 
deeply black and all plaited into little cords, 
full lips, high cheek-bones, ears standing out 
from the skull — the Egyptian type in all its 
purity. A narrow strip of cotton about his 
loins, together with five or six strings of 
glass beads and a few amulets, comprised 
his whole costume. 

He appeared to be the only one on board 
the cangia; for the rowers bending over 
their oars, and concealed from view by the 
gunwales, made their presence known only 
through the symmetrical movements of the 
oars themselves, which spread open alter- 
nately on either side of the vessel, like the 
ribs of a fan, and fell regularly back into the 
water after a short pause. 

Not a breath of air was stirring; and the 
great triangular sail of the cangia, tied up 
and bound to the lowered mast with a silken 
cord, testified that all hope of the wind ris- 
ing had been abandoned. 

The noonday sun shot his arrows perpen- 
dicularly from above; the ashen-hued slime 
of the river banks reflected the fiery glow ; 
a raw light, glaring and blinding in its in- 


6 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


tensity, poured down in torrents of flame; 
the azure of the sky whitened in the heat as 
a metal whitens in the furnace; an ardent 
and lurid fog smoked in the horizon. Not 
a cloud appeared in the sky — a sky mourn- 
ful and changeless as Eternity. 

The water of the Nile, sluggish and wan, 
seemed to slumber in its course, and slowly 
extend itself in sheets of molten tin. No 
breath of air wrinkled its surface, or bowed 
down upon their stalks the cups of the lotus- 
flowers, as rigidly motionless as though 
sculptured ; at long intervals the leap of a 
bechir or fabaka expanding its belly scarcely 
caused a silvery gleam upon the current; 
and the oars of the cangia seemed with diffi- 
culty to tear their way through the fuliginous 
film of that curdled water. The banks were 
desolate, a solemn and mighty sadness 
weighed upon this land, which was never 
aught else than a vast tomb, and in which 
the living appeared to be solely occupied in 
the work of burying the dead. It was an 
arid sadness, dry as pumice stone, without 
melancholy, without reverie, without one 
pearly gray cloud to follow toward the hori- 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


7 


zon, one secret spring wherein to lave one’s 
dusty feet; the sadness of a sphinx weary 
of eternally gazing upon the desert, and un- 
able to detach herself from the granite socle 
upon which she has sharpened her claws for 
twenty centuries. 

So profound was the silence that it seemed 
as though the world had become dumb, or 
that the air had lost all power of conveying 
sound. The only noises which could be 
heard at intervals were the whisperings and 
stifled chuckling ” of the crocodiles, which^ 
enfeebled by the heat, were wallowing 
among the bullrushes by the river banks ; or 
the sound made by some ibis, which, tired 
of standing with one leg doubled up against 
its stomach, and its head sunk between its 
shoulders, suddenly abandoned its motion- 
less attitude, and, brusquely whipping the 
blue air with its white wings, flew off to 
perch upon an obelisk or a palm-tree. 

The cangia flew like an arrow over the 
smooth river-water, leaving behind it a sil- 
very wake which soon disappeared ; and only 
a few foam-bubbles rising to break at the 
surface of the stream bore testimony to the 


8 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


passage of the vessel, then already out of 
sight. 

The ochre-hued or salmon-colored banks 
unrolled themselves rapidly, like scrolls of 
papyrus, between the double azure of water 
and sky so similar in tint that the slender 
tongue of earth which separated them 
seemed like a causeway stretching over an 
immense lake, and that it would have been 
difficult to determine whether the Nile re- 
flected the sky, or whether the sky reflected 
the Nile. 

The scene continually changed. At one 
moment were visible gigantic propylaea, 
whose sloping walls, painted with large 
panels of fantastic figures, were mirrored in 
the river; pylons with broad-bulging capi- 
tals; stairways guarded by huge crouching 
sphinxes, wearing caps with lappets of many 
folds, and crossing their paws of black basalt 
below their sharply projecting breasts; pal- 
aces, immeasurably vast, projecting against 
the horizon the severe horizontal lines of 
their entablatures, where the emblematic 
globe unfolded its mysterious wings like an 
eagle’s vast-extending pinions ; temples with 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA'S NIGHTS 


9 


enormous columns thick as towers, on which 
were limned processions of hieroglyphic fig- 
ures against a background of brilliant white 
— all the monstrosities of that Titanic archi- 
tecture. Again the eye beheld only land- 
scapes of desolate aridity — hills formed of 
stony fragments from excavations and build- 
ing works, crumbs of that gigantic debauch 
of granite which lasted for more than thirty 
centuries; mountains exfoliated by heat, and 
mangled and striped with black lines which 
seemed like the cauterizations of a conflagra- 
tion ; hillocks humped and deformed, squat- 
ting like the criocephalus of the tombs, and 
projecting the outlines of their misshapen 
attitude against the sky-line; expanses of 
greenish clay, reddle, flour-white tufa; and 
from time to time some steep cliff of dry, 
rose-colored granite, where yawned the black 
mouths of the stone quarries. 

This aridity was wholly unrelieved; no 
oasis of foliage refreshed the eye; green 
seemed to be a color unknown to that na- 
ture; only some meagre palm-tree, like a 
vegetable crab, appeared from time to time 
in the horizon; or a thorny fig-tree bran- 


lO 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


dished its tempered leaves like sword blades 
of bronze ; or a carthamus-plant, which had 
found a little moisture to live upon in the 
shadow of some fragment of a broken col- 
umn, relieved the general uniformity with a 
speck of crimson. 

After this rapid glance at the aspect of the 
landscape, let us return to the cangia with 
its fifty rowers, and, without announcing 
ourselves, enter boldly into the naos of 
honor. 

The interior was painted white with green 
arabesques, bands of vermilion, and gilt 
flowers fantastically shaped ; an exceedingly 
fine rush matting covered the floor; at the 
further end stood a little bed, supported 
upon griffin's feet, having a back resem- 
bling that of a modern lounge or sofa; a 
stool with four steps to enable one to climb 
into bed ; and (rather an odd luxury accord- 
ing to our ideas of comfort) a sort of hemi- 
cycle of cedar wood, supported upon a single 
leg, and designed to fit the nape of the neck 
so as to support the head of the person re- 
clining. 

Upon this strange pillow reposed a most 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


II 


charming head, one look of which once 
caused the loss of half a world ; an adorable, 
a divine head ; the head of the most perfect 
woman that ever lived ; the most womanly 
and most queenly of all women ; an admir- 
able type of beauty which the imagination 
of poets could never invest with any new 
grace, and which dreamers will find forever 
in the depths of their dreams — it is not nec- 
essary to name Cleopatra. 

Beside her stood her favorite slave Char- 
mion, waving a large fan of ibis feathers; 
and a young girl was moistening with scented 
water the little reed blinds attached to 
the windows of the naos^ so that the air 
might only enter impregnated with fresh 
odors. 

Near the bed of repose, in a striped vase 
of alabaster with a slender neck and a pecul- 
iarly elegant, tapering shape, vaguely re- 
calling the form of a heron, was placed a 
bouquet of lotus-flowers, some of a celestial 
blue, others of a tender rose-color, like the 
finger-tips of Isis the great goddess. 

Either from caprice or policy, Cleopatra 
did not wear the Greek dress that day. She 


12 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


had just attended a panegyris,* and was re- 
turning to her summer palace still clad in 
the Egyptian costume she had worn at the 
festival. 

Perhaps our fair readers will feel curious 
to know how Queen Cleopatra was attired 
on her return from the Mammisi of Her- 
monthis whereat were worshipped the holy 
triad of the god Mandou, the goddess Ritho, 
and their son, Harphra; luckily we are able 
to satisfy them in this regard. 

For headdress Queen Cleopatra wore a 
kind of very light helmet of beaten gold, 
fashioned in the form of the body and wings 
of the sacred partridge. The wings, opening 
downward like fans, covered the temples, 
and extending below, almost to the neck, 
left exposed on either side, through a small 
aperture, an ear rosier and more delicately 
curled than the shell whence arose that 
Venus whom the Egyptians named Athor; 

* Panegyris ; pi. , panegyreis ^ — from the Greek iravT^yvpLs, 
— signifies the meeting of a whole people to worship at a 
common sanctuary or participate in a national religious 
festival. The assemblies at the Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, 
or Isthmian games were in this sense panegyreis. Sec 
Smith’s Diet. Antiq. — [Trans.] 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


13 


the tail of the bird occupied that place 
where our women wear their chignons; its 
body, covered with imbricated feathers, and 
painted in variegated enamel, concealed the 
upper part of the head ; and its neck, grace- 
fully curving forward over the forehead of 
the wearer, formed together with its little 
head a kind of horn-shaped ornament, all 
sparkling with precious stones; a symbolic 
crest, designed like a tower, completed this 
odd but elegant headdress. Hair dark as a 
starless night flowed from beneath this hel- 
met, and streamed in long tresses over the 
fair shoulders whereof the commencement 
only, alas ! was left exposed by a collarette, 
or gorget, adorned with many rows of ser- 
pentine stones, azodrachs, and chrysoberyls ; 
a linen robe diagonally cut — a mist of mate- 
rial, of woven air, ventus textilis as Petro- 
nius says, undulated in vapory whiteness 
about a lovely body whose outlines it 
scarcely shaded with the softest shading. 
This robe had half-sleeves, tight at the 
shoulder, but widening toward the elbows 
like our manches-h-sabot, and permitting a 
glimpse of an adorable arm and a perfect 


14 ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 

hand, the arm being clasped by six golden 
bracelets, and the hand adorned with a ring 
representing the sacred scarabaeus. A girdle, 
whose knotted ends hung down in front, 
confined this free-floating tunic at the waist ; 
a short cloak adorned with fringing com- 
pleted the costume; and, if a few barbarous 
words will not frighten Parisian ears, we 
might add that the robe was called schenti^ 
and the short cloak, calisiris. 

Finally, we may observe that Queen Cleo- 
patra wore very thin, light sandals, turned 
up at the toes, and fastened over the instep, 
like the souliers-h-la-poulaine of rtie mediae- 
val chatelaines. 

But Queen Cleopatra did not wear that 
air of satisfaction which becomes a woman 
conscious of being perfectly beautiful and 
perfectly well dressed. She tossed and turned 
in her little bed, and her sudden movements 
momentarily disarranged the folds of her 
gauzy conopeunty which Charmion as often 
rearranged with inexhaustible patience, and 
without ceasing to wave her fan. 

“ This room is stifling,” said Cleopatra; 
” even if Pthah the God of Fire established 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


15 


his forges in here, he could not make it hot- 
ter; the air is like the breath of a furnace! " 
And she moistened her lips with the tip of 
her little tongue, and stretched out her hand 
like a feverish patient seeking an absent 
cup. 

Charmion, ever attentive, at once clapped 
her hands. A black slave clothed in a short 
tunic hanging in folds like an Albanian petti- 
coat, and a panther-skin thrown over his 
shoulders, entered with the suddenness of 
an apparition ; with his left hand balancing 
a tray laden with cups, and slices of water- 
melon, anci carrying in his right a long vase 
with a spout like a modern teapot. 

The slave filled one of these cups, pour- 
ing the liquor into it from a considerable 
height with marvellous dexterity, and 
placed it before the queen. Cleopatra 
merely touched the beverage with her lips, 
laid the cup down beside her, and turning 
upon Charmion her beautiful liquid black 
eyes, lustrous with living light, exclaimed : 

“ O Charmion, I am weary unto death! " 


l6 ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 

CHAPTER II 

Charmion, at once anticipating a confi- 
dence, assumed a look of pained sympathy, 
and drew nearer to her mistress. 

I am horribly weary! ” continued Cleo- 
patra, letting her arms fall like one utterly 
discouraged. “ This Egypt crushes, annihi- 
lates me; this sky with its implacable azure 
is sadder than the deep night of Erebus; 
never a cloud, never a shadow, and always 
that red, sanguine sun, which glares down 
upon you like the eye of a Cyclops. Ah, 
Charmion, I would give a pearl for one drop 
of rain! From the inflamed pupil of that 
sky of bronze no tear has ever yet fallen 
upon the desolation of this land ; it is only a 
vast covering for a tomb — the dome of a 
necropolis; a sky dead and dried up like the 
mummies it hangs over; it weighs upon my 
shoulders like an over-heavy mantle ; it con- 
strains and terrifies me; it seems to me that 
I could not stand up erect without striking 
my forehead against it. And, moreover, 
this land is truly an awful land ; all things 


ONE OF Cleopatra's nights 


17 


in it are gloomy, enigmatic, incomprehensi- 
ble. Imagination has produced in it only 
monstrous chimeras and monuments im- 
measurable; this architecture and this art 
fill me with fear; those colossi, whose stone- 
entangled limbs compel them to remain eter- 
nally sitting with their hands upon their 
knees, weary me with their stupid immobil- 
ity; they trouble my eyes and my horizon. 
When, indeed, shall the giant come who is 
to take them by the hand and relieve them 
from their long watch of twenty centuries ? 
For even granite itself must grow weary at 
last ! Of what master, then, do they await 
the coming, to leave their mountain-seats 
and rise in token of respect ? Of what invisi- 
ble flock are those huge sphinxes the guard- 
ians, crouching like dogs on the watch, that 
they never close their eyelids, and forever 
extend their claws in readiness to seize ? 
Why are their stony eyes so obstinately fixed 
upon eternity and infinity ? What weird 
secret do their firmly locked lips retain 
within their breasts ? On the right hand, 
on the left, whithersoever one turns, only 
frightful monsters are visible — dogs with the 


1 8 ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 

heads of men; men with the heads of dogs; 
chimeras begotten of hideous couplings in 
the shadowy depths of the labyrinths ; fig- 
ures of Anubis, Typhon, Osiris; partridges 
with great yellow eyes that seem to pierce 
through you with their inquisitorial gaze, 
and see beyond and behind you things which 
one dare not speak of — a family of animals 
and horrible gods with scaly wings, hooked 
beaks, trenchant claws, ever ready to seize 
and devour you should you venture to cross 
the threshold of the temple, or lift a corner 
of the veil. 

“ Upon the walls, upon the columns, on 
the ceilings, on the floors, upon palaces and 
temples, in the long passages and the deep- 
est pits of the necropoli, even within the 
bowels of the earth where light never comes, 
and where the flames of the torches die for 
want of air, forever and everywhere are 
sculptured and painted interminable hiero- 
glyphics, telling in language unintelligible 
of things which are no longer known, and 
which belong, doubtless, to the vanished 
creations of the past — prodigious buried 
works wherein a whole nation was sacrificed 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 1 9 

to write the epitaph of one king ! Mystery 
and granite — this is Egypt ! Truly a fair land 
for a young woman, and a young queen. 

“ Menacing and funereal symbols alone 
meet the eye — the emblems of the pedunty 
the taUy allegorical globes, coiling serpents, 
and the scales in which souls are weighed — 
the Unknown, death, nothingness. In the 
place of any vegetation only stelce limned 
with weird characters; instead of avenues 
of trees, avenues of granite obelisks ; in lieu 
of soil, vast pavements of granite for which 
whole mountains could each furnish but one 
slab ; in place of a sky, ceilings of granite — 
eternity made palpable, a bitter and ever- 
lasting sarcasm upon the frailty and brevity 
of life — stairways built only for the limbs 
of Titans, which the human foot cannot 
ascend save by the aid of ladders ; columns 
that a hundred arms cannot encircle ; laby- 
rinths in which one might travel for years 
without discovering the termination — the 
vertigo of enormity, the drunkenness of the 
gigantic, the reckless efforts of that pride 
which would at any cost engrave its name 
deeply upon the face of the world. 


20 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


“ And, moreover, Charmion, I tell you a 
thought haunts me which terrifies me. In 
other lands of the earth, corpses are burned, 
and their ashes soon mingle with the soil. 
Here, it is said that the living have no other 
occupation than that of preserving the dead. 
Potent balms save them from destruction; 
the remains endure after the soul has evapo- 
rated. Beneath this people lie twenty peo- 
ples; each city stands upon twenty layers 
of necropoli ; each generation which passes 
away leaves a population of mummies to a 
shadowy city. Beneath the father you find 
the grandfather and the great-grandfather 
in their gilded and painted boxes, even as 
they were during life; and should you dig 
down forever, forever you would still find 
the underlying dead. 

“ When I think upon those bandage- 
swathed myriads — those multitudes of 
parched spectres who fill the sepulchral pits, 
and who have been there for two thousand 
years face to face in their own silence, which 
nothing ever breaks, not even the noise 
which the graveworms make in crawling, 
and who will be found intact after yet an- 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


21 


other two thousand years, with their croco- 
diles, their cats, their ibises, and all things 
that lived in their lifetime — then terrors seize 
me, and I feel my flesh creep. What do 
they mutter to each other ? For they still 
have lips, and every ghost would find its 
body in the same state as when it quitted it, 
if they should all take the fancy to return. 

“ Ah, truly is Egypt a sinister kingdom 
and little suited to me, the laughter-loving 
and merry one. Everything in it encloses a 
mummy; that is the heart and the kernel of 
all things. After a thousand turns you 
must always end there; the Pyramids them- 
selves hide sarcophagi. What nothingness 
and madness is this ! Disembowel the sky 
with gigantic triangles of stone — you cannot 
thereby lengthen your corpse an inch. How 
can one rejoice and live in a land like this, 
where the only perfume you can respire is 
the acrid odor of the naphtha and bitumen 
which boil in the caldrons of the embalmers, 
where the very flooring of your chamber 
sounds hollow because the corridors of the 
hypogea and the mortuary pits extend even 
under your alcove? To be the queen of 


22 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


mummies, to have none to converse with 
but statues in constrained and rigid atti- 
tudes — this is, in truth, a cheerful lot. 
Again, if I only had some heartfelt passion 
to relieve this melancholy, some interest in 
life; if I could but love somebody or some- 
thing; if I were even loved; but I am not. 

“ This is why I am weary, Charmion. 
With love, this grim and arid Egypt would 
seem to me fairer than even Greece with her 
ivory gods, her temples of snowy marble, 
her groves of laurel, and fountains of living 
water. There I should never dream of the 
weird face of Anubis and the ghastly ter- 
rors of the cities underground.” 

Charmion smiled incredulously. “ That 
ought not, surely, to be a source of much 
grief to you, O queen ; for every glance of 
your eyes transpierces hearts, like the golden 
arrows of Eros himself.” 

” Can a queen,” answered Cleopatra, 
” ever know whether it is her face or her 
diadem that is loved ? The rays of her 
starry crown dazzle the eyes and the heart. 
Were I to descend from the height of my 
throne, would I even have the celebrity or 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


23 


the popularity of Bacchis or Archianassa, 
of the first courtesan from Athens or Mile- 
tus ? A queen is something so far removed 
from men, so elevated, so widely separated 
from them, so impossible for them to reach ! 
What presumption dare flatter itself in such 
an enterprise ? It is not simply a woman, 
it is an august and sacred being that has no 
sex, and that is worshipped kneeling with- 
out being loved. Who was ever really 
enamoured of Hera the snowy-armed or 
Pallas of the sea-green eyes ? Who ever 
sought to kiss the silver feet of Thetis or 
the rosy fingers of Aurora ? What lover of 
the divine beauties ever took unto himself 
wings that he might soar to the golden pal- 
aces of heaven ? Respect and fear chill 
hearts in our presence, and in order to ob- 
tain the love of our equals, one must de- 
scend into those necropoli of which I have 
just been speaking.*' 

Although she offered no further objection 
to the arguments of her mistress, a vague 
smile which played about the lips of the hand- 
some Greek slave showed that she had little 
faith in the inviolability of the royal person. 


24 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


“ Ah,” continued Cleopatra, ” I wish that 
something would happen to me, some 
strange, unexpected adventure. The songs 
of the poets ; the dances of the Syrian slaves ; 
the banquets, rose garlanded, and prolonged 
into the dawn ; the nocturnal races ; the La- 
conian dogs; the tame lions; the hump- 
backed dwarfs; the brotherhood of the In- 
imitables; the combats of the arena; the 
new dresses ; the byssus robes ; the clusters 
of pearls; the perfumes from Asia; the most 
exquisite of luxuries; the wildest of splen- 
dors — nothing any longer gives me pleasure. 
Everything has become indifferent to me, 
everything is insupportable to me.” 

” It is easily to be seen,” muttered Char- 
mion to herself, ” that the queen has not 
had a lover nor had anyone killed for a 
whole month.” 

Fatigued with so lengthy a tirade, Cleo- 
patra once more took the cup placed beside 
her, moistened her lips with it, and putting 
her head beneath her arm, like a dove put- 
ting its head under its wing, composed her- 
self for slumber as best she could. Charmion 
unfastened her sandals and commenced to 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


25 


gently tickle the soles of her feet with a pea- 
cock’s feather, and Sleep soon sprinkled his 
golden dust upon the beautiful eyes of Ptol- 
emy’s sister. 

While Cleopatra sleeps, let us ascend upon 
deck and enjoy the glorious sunset view. 
A broad band of violet color, warmed deeply 
with ruddy tints toward the west, occupies 
all the lower portion of the sky ; encounter- 
ing the zone of azure above, the violet shade 
melts into a clear lilac, and fades off through 
half-rosy tints into the blue beyond; afar, 
where the sun, red as a buckler fallen from 
the furnace of Vulcan, casts his burning re- 
flection, the deeper shades turn to pale cit- 
ron hues, and glow with turquoise tints. 
The water, rippling under an oblique beam 
of light, shines with the dull gleam of the 
quicksilvered side of a mirror, or like a 
damascened blade. The sinuosities of the 
bank, the reeds, and all objects along the 
shore are brought out in sharp black relief 
against the bright glow. By the aid of this 
crepuscular light you may perceive afar off, 
like a grain of dust floating upon quicksilver, 
a little brown speck trembling in the net- 


26 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


work of luminous ripples. Is it a teal div- 
ing, a tortoise lazily drifting with the cur- 
rent, a crocodile raising the tip of his scaly 
snout above the water to breathe the cooler 
air of evening, the belly of a hippopotamus 
gleaming amidstream, or perhaps a rock left 
bare by the falling of the river ? For the 
ancient Opi-Mou, Father of Waters, sadly 
needs to replenish his dry urn from the sol- 
stitial rains of the Mountains of the Moon. 

It is none of these. By the atoms of 
Osiris so deftly resewn together, it is a man, 
who seems to walk, to skate, upon the water ! 
Now the frail bark which sustains him be- 
comes visible, a very nutshell of a boat, a 
hollow fish; three strips of bark fitted to- 
gether (one for the bottom and two for the 
sides), and strongly fastened at either end 
by cord well smeared with bitumen. The 
man stands erect, with one foot on either 
side of this fragile vessel, which he impels 
with a single oar that also serves the pur- 
pose of a rudder; and although the royal 
cangia moves rapidly under the efforts of 
the fifty rowers, the little black bark visibly 
gains upon it. 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


27 


Cleopatra desired some strange adventure, 
something wholly unexpected. This little 
bark which moves so mysteriously seems 
to us to be conveying an . adventure, or, at 
least, an adventurer. Perhaps it contains 
the hero of our story; the thing is not im- 
possible. 

At any rate he was a handsome youth of 
twenty, with hair so black that it seemed to 
own a tinge of blue, a skin blonde as gold, 
and a form so perfectly proportioned that 
he might have been taken for a bronze statue 
by Lysippus. Although he had been row- 
ing for a very long time he betrayed no sign 
of fatigue, and not a single drop of sweat 
bedewed his forehead. 

The sun half sank below the horizon, and 
against his broken disk figured the dark sil- 
houette of a far distant city, which the eye 
could not have distinguished but for this ac- 
cidental effect of light. His radiance soon 
faded altogether away, and the stars, fair 
night-flowers of heaven, opened their chal- 
ices of gold in the azure of the firmament. 
The royal cangia, closely followed by the 
little bark, stopped before a huge marble 


28 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


stairway, whereof each step supported one 
of those sphinxes that Cleopatra so much 
detested. This was the landing-place of the 
summer palace. 

Cleopatra, leaning upon Charmion, passed 
swiftly, like a gleaming vision, between a 
double line of lantern-bearing slaves. 

The youth took from the bottom of his 
little boat a great lion-skin, threw it across 
his shoulders, drew the tiny shell upon the 
beach, and wended his way toward the 
palace. 


CHAPTER III 

Who is this young man, balancing him- 
self upon a fragment of bark, who dares 
follow the royal cangia, and is able to con- 
tend in a race of speed against fifty strong 
rowers from the land of Kush, all naked to 
to the waist, and anointed with palm-oil ? 
What secret motive urges him to this swift 
pursuit ? That, indeed, is one of the many 
things we are obliged to know in our char- 
acter of the intuition-gifted poet, for whose 
benefit all men, and even all women (a much 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


29 


more difficult matter), must have in their 
breasts that little window which Momus of 
old demanded. 

It is not a very easy thing to find out pre- 
cisely what a young man from the land of 
Kemi, who followed the barge of Cleopatra, 
queen and goddess Evergetes, on her return 
from the Mammisi of Hermonthis two thou- 
sand years ago, was then thinking of. But 
we shall make the effort notwithstanding. 

Meiamoun, son of Mandouschopsh, was 
a youth of strange character; nothing by 
which ordinary minds are affected made any 
impression upon him. He seemed to belong 
to some loftier race, and might well have 
been regarded as the offspring of some 
divine adultery. His glance had the steady 
brilliancy of a falcon’s gaze, and a serene 
majesty sat on his brow as upon a pedestal 
of marble; a noble pride curled his upper 
lip, and expanded his nostrils like those of 
a fiery horse. Although owning a grace of 
form almost maidenly in its delicacy, and 
though the bosom of the fair and effeminate 
god Dionysos was not more softly rounded 
or smoother than his, yet beneath this soft 


30 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


exterior were hidden sinews of steel and the 
strength of Hercules — a strange privilege of 
certain antique natures to unite in them- 
selves the beauty of woman with the strength 
of man. 

As for his complexion, we must acknowl- 
edge that it was of a tawny orange color, a 
hue little in accordance with our white-and- 
rose ideas of beauty ; but which did not pre- 
vent him from being a very charming young 
man, much sought after by all kinds of 
women — yellow, red, copper-colored, sooty- 
black, or golden skinned, and even by one 
fair, white Greek. 

Do not suppose from this that Meiamoun’s 
lot was altogether enviable. The ashes of 
aged Priam, the very snows of Hippolytus, 
were not more insensible or more frigid ; the 
young white-robed neophyte preparing for 
the initiation into the mysteries of Isis led 
no chaster life ; the young maiden benumbed 
by the icy shadow of her mother was not 
more shyly pure. 

Nevertheless, for so coy a youth, the 
pleasures of Meiamoun were certainly of a 
singular nature. He would go forth quietly 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


31 


some morning with his little buckler of hip- 
popotamus hide, his harpe or curved sword, 
a triangular bow, and a snake-skin quiver 
filled with barbed arrows ; then he would 
ride at a gallop far into the desert, upon his 
slender-limbed, small-headed, wild-maned 
mare, until he could find some lion-tracks. 
He especially delighted in taking the little 
lion-cubs from underneath the belly of their 
mother. In all things he loved the perilous 
or the unachievable. He preferred to walk 
where it seemed impossible for any human 
being to obtain a foothold, or to swim in a 
raging torrent, and he had accordingly chosen 
the neighborhood of the cataracts for his 
bathing place in the Nile. The Abyss called 
him ! 

Such was Meiamoun, son of Mandou- 
schopsh. 

For some time his humors had been grow- 
ing more savage than ever. During whole 
months he buried himself in the Ocean of 
Sands, returning only at long intervals. 
Vainly would his uneasy mother lean from 
her terrace and gaze anxiously down the 
long road with tireless eyes. At last, after 


32 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


weary waiting, a little whirling cloud of dust 
would become visible in the horizon, and 
finally the cloud would open to allow a full 
view of Meiamoun, all covered with dust, 
riding upon a mare gaunt as a wolf, with red 
and bloodshot eyes, nostrils trembling, and 
huge scars along her flanks — scars which cer- 
tainly were not made by spurs. 

After having hung up in his room some 
hyena or lion skin, he would start off again. 

And yet no one might have been hap- 
pier than Meiamoun. He was beloved by 
Nephthe, daughter of the priest Afomou- 
this, and the loveliest woman of the Nome 
Arsinoites. Only such a being as Meiamoun 
could have failed to see that Nephthe had 
the most charmingly oblique and indescrib- 
ably voluptuous eyes, a mouth sweetly il- 
luminated by ruddy smiles, little teeth of 
wondrous whiteness and transparency, arms 
exquisitely round, and feet more perfect 
than the jasper feet of the statue of Isis. 
Assuredly there was not a smaller hand nor 
longer hair than hers in all Egypt. The 
charms of Nephthe could have been eclipsed 
only by those of Cleopatra. But who could 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 33 

dare to dream of loving Cleopatra ? Ixion, 
enamoured of Juno, strained only a cloud to 
his bosom, and must forever roll the wheel 
of his punishment in hell. 

It was Cleopatra whom Meiamoun loved. 

He had at first striven to tame this wild 
passion ; he had wrestled fiercely with it ; but 
love cannot be strangled even as a lion is 
strangled, and the strong skill of the mighti- 
est athlete avails nothing in such a contest. 
The arrow had remained in the wound, and 
he carried it with him everywhere. The 
radiant and splendid image of Cleopatra, with 
her golden-pointed diadem and her imperial 
purple, standing above a nation on their 
knees, illumined his nightly dreams and his 
waking thoughts. Like some imprudent 
man who has dared to look at the sun and 
forever thereafter beholds an impalpable 
blot floating before his eyes, so Meiamoun 
ever beheld Cleopatra. Eagles may gaze 
undazzled at the sun, but what diamond eye 
can with impunity fix itself upon a beautiful 
woman, a beautiful queen ? 

He commenced at last to spend his life in 
wandering about the neighborhood of the 


3 


34 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


royal dwelling, that he might at least breathe 
the same air as Cleopatra, that he might 
sometimes kiss the almost imperceptible 
print of her foot upon the sand (a happi- 
ness, alas! rare indeed). He attended the 
sacred festivals and panegyreis, striving to 
obtain one beaming glance of her eyes, to 
catch in passing one stealthy glimpse of her 
loveliness in some of its thousand varied 
aspects. At other moments, filled with sud- 
den shame of this mad life, he gave him- 
self up to the chase with redoubled ardor, 
and sought by fatigue to tame the ardor 
of his blood and the impetuosity of his 
desires. 

He had gone to the panegyris of Her- 
monthis, and, in the vague hope of behold- 
ing the queen again for an instant as she 
disembarked at the summer palace, had fol- 
lowed her cangia in his boat — little heeding 
the sharp stings of the sun — through a heat 
intense enough to make the panting sphinxes 
melt in lava-sweat upon their reddened 
pedestals. 

And then he felt that the supreme mo- 
ment was nigh, that the decisive instant of 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


35 


his life was at hand, and that he could not 
die with his secret in his breast. 

It is a strange situation truly to find one- 
self enamoured of a queen. It is as though 
one loved a star; yet she, the star, comes 
forth nightly to sparkle in her place in 
heaven. It is a kind of mysterious rendez- 
vous. You may find her again, you may see 
her; she is not offended at your gaze. Oh, 
misery ! to be poor, unknown, obscure, 
seated at the very foot of the ladder, and to 
feel one’s heart breaking with love for some- 
thing glittering, solemn, and magnificent — 
for a woman whose meanest female attend- 
ant would scorn you ! — to gaze fixedly and 
fatefully upon one who never sees you, who 
never will see you ; one to whom you are no 
more than a ripple on the sea of humanity, 
in nowise differing from the other ripples, 
and who might a hundred times encounter 
you without once recognizing you ; to have 
no reason to offer should an opportunity for 
addressing her present itself in excuse for 
such mad audacity — neither poetical talent, 
nor great genius, nor any superhuman quali- 
fication — nothing but love; and to be able 


36 ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 

to offer in exchange for beauty, nobility, 
power, and all imaginable splendor only 
one's passion and one’s youth — rare offer- 
ings, forsooth! 

Such were the thoughts which over- 
whelmed Meiamoun. Lying upon the sand, 
supporting his chin on his palms, he per- 
mitted himself to be lifted and borne away 
by the inexhaustible current of reverie ; he 
sketched out a thousand projects, each mad- 
der than the last. He felt convinced that 
he was seeking after the unattainable, but 
he lacked the courage to frankly renounce 
his undertaking, and a perfidious hope 
came to whisper some lying promises in his 
ear. 

“ Athor, mighty goddess,” he murmured 
in a deep voice, ” what evil have I done 
against thee that I should be made thus mis- 
erable ? Art thou avenging thyself for my 
disdain of Nephthe, daughter of the priest 
Afomouthis ? Hast thou afflicted me thus 
for having rejected the love of Lamia, the 
Athenian hetaira, or of Flora, the Roman 
courtesan ? Is it my fault that my heart 
should be sensible only to the matchless 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


37 


beauty of thy rival, Cleopatra ? Why hast 
thou wounded my soul with the envenomed 
arrow of unattainable love ? What sacrifice, 
what offerings dost thou desire ? Must I 
erect to thee a chapel of the rosy marble of 
Syene with columns crowned by gilded capi- 
tals, a ceiling all of one block, and hiero- 
glyphics deeply sculptured by the best work- 
men of Memphis and of Thebes ? Answer 
me.” 

Like all gods or goddesses thus invoked, 
Athor answered not a word, and Meiamoun 
resolved upon a desperate expedient. 

Cleopatra, on her part, likewise invoked 
the goddess Athor. She prayed for a new 
pleasure, for some fresh sensation. As she 
languidly reclined upon her couch she 
thought to herself that the number of the 
senses was sadly limited, that the most ex- 
quisite refinements of delight soon yielded 
to satiety, and that it was really no small 
task for a queen to find means of occupying 
her time. To test new poisons upon slaves ; 
to make men fight with tigers, or gladiators 
with each other; to drink pearls dissolved; 
to swallow the wealth of a whole province — 


38 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


all these things had become commonplace 
and insipid. 

Charmion was fairly at her wit's end, and 
knew not what to do for her mistress. 

Suddenly a whistling sound was heard, 
and an arrow buried itself, quivering, in the 
cedar wainscoting of the wall. 

Cleopatra well-nigh fainted with terror. 
Charmion ran to the window, leaned out, 
and beheld only a flake of foam on the sur- 
face of the river. A scroll of papyrus encir- 
cled the wood of the arrow. It bore only 
these words, written in Phoenician charac- 
ters, “ I love you ! " 

CHAPTER IV 

“ I LOVE you,” repeated Cleopatra, mak- 
ingthe serpent-coiling strip of papyrus writhe 
between her delicate white fingers. ” Those 
are the words I longed for. What intelli- 
gent spirit, what invisible genius has thus 
so fully comprehended my desire ? ” 

And thoroughly aroused from her languid 
torpor, she sprang out of bed with the agil- 
ity of a cat which has scented a mouse. 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA'S NIGHTS 39 

placed her little ivory feet in her embroid- 
ered tatbebSy threw a byssus tunic over her 
shoulders, and ran to the window from 
which Charmion was still gazing. 

The night was clear and calm. The risen 
moon outlined with huge angles of light and 
shadow the architectural masses of the pal- 
ace, which stood out in strong relief against 
a background of bluish transparency; and 
the waters of the river, wherein her reflection 
lengthened into a shining column, were frost- 
ed with silvery ripples. A gentle breeze, such 
as might have been mistaken for the respira- 
tion of the slumbering sphinxes, quivered 
among the reeds and shook the azure bells 
of the lotus flowers ; the cables of the vessels 
moored to the Nile's banks groaned feebly, 
and the rippling tide moaned upon the shore 
like a dove lamenting for its mate. A vague 
perfume of vegetation, sweeter than that of 
the aromatics burned in the anschir of the 
priests of Anubis, floated into the chamber. 
It was one of those enchanted nights of the 
Orient, which are more splendid than our 
fairest days ; for our sun can ill compare with 
that Oriental moon. 


4o 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


“ Do you not see far over there, almost in 
the middle of the river, the head of a man 
swimming ? See, he crosses that track of 
light, and passes into the shadow beyond! 
He is already out of sight ! ” And, support- 
ing herself upon Charmion’s shoulder, she 
leaned out, with half of her fair body be- 
yond the sill of the window, in the effort to 
catch another glimpse of the mysterious 
swimmer ; but a grove of Nile acacias, 
dhoum-palms, and sayals flung its deep 
shadow upon the river in that direction, and 
protected the flight of the daring fugitive. 
If Meiamoun had but had the courtesy to 
look back, he might have beheld Cleopa- 
tra, the sidereal queen, eagerly seeking him 
through the night gloom — he, the poor ob- 
scure Egyptian, the miserable lion-hunter. 

“ Charmion, Charmion, send hither Phre- 
hipephbour, the chief of the rowers, and 
have two boats despatched in pursuit of that 
man ! ” cried Cleopatra, whose curiosity was 
excited to the highest pitch. 

Phrehipephbour appeared, a man of the 
race of Nahasi, with large hands and muscu- 
lar arms, wearing a red cap not unlike a 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


41 


Phrygian helmet in form, and clad only in a 
pair of narrow drawers diagonally striped 
with white and blue. His huge torso, en- 
tirely nude, black and polished like a globe 
of jet, shone under the lamplight. He re- 
ceived the commands of the gueen and 
instantly retired to execute them. 

Two long, narrow boats, so light that the 
least inattention to equilibrium would cap- 
size them, were soon cleaving the waters 
of the Nile with hissing rapidity under the 
efforts of the twenty vigorous rowers, but 
the pursuit was all in vain. After searching 
the river banks in every direction, and care- 
fully exploring every patch of reeds, Phre- 
hipephbour returned to the palace, having 
only succeeded in putting to flight some soli- 
tary heron which had been sleeping on one 
leg, or in troubling the digestion of some 
terrified crocodile. 

So intense was the vexation of Cleopatra 
at being thus foiled, that she felt a strong 
inclination to condemn Phrehipephbour 
either to the wild beasts or to the hardest 
labor at the grindstone. Happily, Charmion 
interceded for the trembling unfortunate. 


42 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


who turned pale with fear, despite his black 
skin. It was the first time in Cleopatra's 
life that one of her desires had not been 
gratified as soon as expressed, and she ex- 
perienced, in consequence, a kind of uneasy 
surprise; a first doubt, as it were, of her 
own omnipotence. 

She, Cleopatra, wife and sister of Ptolemy — 
she who had been proclaimed goddess Ever- 
getes, living queen of the regions Above and 
Below, Eye of Light, Chosen of the Sun (as 
may still be read within the cartouches sculp- 
tured on the walls of the temples) — she to 
find an obstacle in her path, to have wished 
aught that failed of accomplishment, to have 
spoken and not been obeyed ! As well be 
the wife of some wretched Paraschistes, 
some corpse-cutter, and melt natron in a 
caldron! It was monstrous, preposterous! 
and none but the most gentle and clement 
of queens could have refrained from crucify- 
ing that miserable Phrehipephbour. 

You wished for some adventure, some- 
thing strange and unexpected. Your wish 
has been gratified. You find that your king- 
dom is not so dead as you deemed it. It 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


43 


was not the stony arm of a statue which shot 
that arrow; it was not from a mummy’s 
heart that came those three words which 
have moved even you — you who smilingly 
watched your poisoned slaves dashing their 
heads and beating their feet upon your beau- 
tiful mosaic and porphyry pavements in the 
convulsions of death-agony; you who even 
applauded the tiger which boldly buried its 
muzzle in the flank of some vanquished 
gladiator. 

You could obtain all else you might wish 
for — chariots of silver, starred with emeralds; 
griffin-quadrigerae ; tunics of purple thrice- 
dyed ; mirrors of molten steel, so clear that 
you might find the charms of your loveliness 
faithfully copied in them; robes from the 
land of Serica, so fine and subtly light that 
they could be drawn through the ring worn 
upon your little finger; Orient pearls of won- 
drous color; cups wrought by Myron or 
Lysippus; Indian paroquets that speak like 
poets — all things else you could obtain, even 
should you ask for the Cestus of Venus or 
the pshent of Isis, but most certainly you 
cannot this night capture the man who shot 


44 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


the arrow which still quivers in the cedar 
wood of your couch. 

The task of the slaves who must dress you 
to-morrow will not be a grateful one. They 
will hardly escape with blows. The bosom 
of the unskilful waiting-maid will be apt to 
prove a cushion for the golden pins of the 
toilette, and the poor hairdresser will run 
great risk of being suspended by her feet 
from the ceiling. 

“ Who could have had the audacity to 
send me this avowal upon the shaft of an 
arrow ? Could it have been the Nomarch 
Amoun-Ra who fancies himself handsomer 
than the Apollo of the Greeks ? What think 
you, Charmion ? Or perhaps Cheapsiro, 
commander of Hermothybia, who is so 
boastful of his conquests in the land of 
Kush ? Or is it not more likely to have 
been young Sextus, that Roman debauchee 
who paints his face, lisps in speaking, and 
wears sleeves in the fashion of the Persians ? ” 

“ Queen, it was none of those. Though 
you are indeed the fairest of women, those 
men only flatter you ; they do not love you. 
The Nomarch Amoun-Ra has chosen him- 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


45 


self an idol to which he will be forever faith- 
ful, and that is his own person. The war- 
rior Cheapsiro thinks of nothing save the 
pleasure of recounting his victories. As for 
Sextus, he is so seriously occupied with the 
preparation of a new cosmetic that he cannot 
dream of anything else. Besides, he had 
just purchased some Laconian dresses, a 
number of yellow tunics embroidered with 
gold, and some Asiatic children which ab- 
sorb all his time. Not one of those fine 
lords would risk his head in so daring and 
dangerous an undertaking; they do not love 
you well enough for that. 

“ Yesterday, in your cangia, you said that 
men dared not fix their dazzled eyes upon 
you ; that they knew only how to turn pale 
in your presence, to fall at your feet and 
supplicate your mercy; and that your sole 
remaining resource would be to awake some 
ancient, bitumen-perfumed Pharaoh from 
his gilded coffin. Now here is an ardent 
and youthful heart that loves you. What 
will you do with it ? ” 

Cleopatra that night sought slumber in 
vain. She tossed feverishly upon her couch, 


46 ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 

and long and vainly invoked Morpheus, the 
brother of Death. She incessantly repeated 
that she was the most unhappy of queens, 
that every one sought to persecute her, and 
that her life had become insupportable ; woe- 
ful lamentations which had little effect upon 
Charmion, although she pretended to sym- 
pathize with them. 

Let us for a while leave Cleopatra to seek 
fugitive sleep, and direct her suspicions suc- 
cessively upon each noble of the court. Let 
us return to Meiamoun, and as we are much 
more sagacious than Phrehipephbour, chief 
of the rowers, we shall have no difficulty in 
finding him. 

Terrified at his own hardihood, Meiamoun 
had thrown himself into the Nile, and had 
succeeded in swimming the current and gain- 
ing the little grove of dhoum-palms before 
Phrehipephbour had even launched the two 
boats in pursuit of him. 

When he had recovered breath, and 
brushed back his long black locks, all damp 
with river foam, behind his ears, he began 
to feel more at ease, more inwardly calm. 
Cleopatra possessed something which had 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


47 


come from him ; some sort of communica- 
tion was now established between them. 
Cleopatra was thinking of him, Meiamoun. 
Perhaps that thought might be one of wrath ; 
but then he had at least been able to awake 
some feeling within her, whether of fear, 
anger, or pity. He had forced her to the 
consciousness of his existence. It was true 
that he had forgotten to inscribe his name 
upon the papyrus scroll, but what more 
of him could the queen have learned from 
the inscription, Meiamoun, Son of Mandou- 
schopsh ? In her eyes the slave and the mon- 
arch were equal. A goddess in choosing a 
peasant for her lover stoops no lower than 
in choosing a patrician or a king. The Im- 
mortals from a height so lofty can behold 
only love in the man of their choice. 

The thought which had weighed upon his 
breast like the knee of a colossus of brass 
had at last departed. It had traversed the 
air; it had even reached the queen herself, 
the apex of the triangle, the inaccessible 
summit. It had aroused curiosity in that 
impassive heart ; a prodigious advance, truly, 
toward success. 


48 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


Metamoun, indeed, never suspected that 
he had so thoroughly succeeded in this wise, 
but he felt more tranquil ; for he had sworn 
unto himself by that mystic Bari who guides 
the souls of the dead to Amenthi, by the 
sacred birds Bermou and Ghenghen, by Ty- 
phon and by Osiris, and by all things aw- 
ful in Egyptian mythology, that he should 
be the accepted lover of Cleopatra, though 
it were but for a single night, though for 
only a single hour, though it should cost 
him his life and even his very soul. 

If we must explain how he had fallen so 
deeply in love with a woman whom he had 
beheld only from afar off, and to whom he 
had hardly dared to raise his eyes — even he 
who was wont to gaze fearlessly into the 
yellow eyes of the lion — or how the tiny 
seed of love, chance-fallen upon his heart, 
had grown there so rapidly and extended its 
roots so deeply, we can answer only that it 
is a mystery which we are unable to ex- 
plain. We have already said of Meiamoun, 
— The Abyss called him. 

Once assured that Phrehipephbour had 
returned with his rowers, he again threw 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 49 

himself into the current and once more swam 
toward the palace of Cleopatra, whose lamp 
still shone through the window curtains like 
a painted star. Never did Leander swim 
with more courage and vigor toward the 
tower of Sestos; yet for Meiamoun no Hero 
was waiting, ready to pour vials of perfume 
upon his head to dissipate the briny odors 
of the sea and banish the sharp kisses of the 
storm. 

A strong blow from some keen lance or 
harpe was certainly the worst he had to fear, 
and in truth he had but little fear of such 
things. 

He swam close under the walls of the pal- 
ace, which bathed its marble feet in the 
river’s depths, and paused an instant before 
a submerged archway into which the water 
rushed downward in eddying whirls. Twice, 
thrice he plunged into the vortex unsuccess- 
fully. At last, with better luck, he found 
the opening and disappeared. 

This archway was the opening to a vaulted 
canal which conducted the waters of the 
Nile into the baths of Cleopatra. 


4 


50 


ONE OF Cleopatra’s nights 


CHAPTER V 

Cleopatra found no rest until morning, 
at the hour when wandering dreams reenter 
the Ivory Gate. Amid the illusions of sleep 
she beheld all kinds of lovers swimming rivers 
and scaling walls in order to come to her, 
and, through the vague souvenirs of the night 
before, her dreams appeared fairly riddled 
with arrows bearing declarations of love. 
Starting nervously from time to time in her 
troubled slumbers, she struck her little feet 
unconsciously against the bosom of Char- 
mion, who lay across the foot of the bed to 
serve her as a cushion. 

When she awoke, a merry sunbeam was 
playing through the window curtain, whose 
woof it penetrated with a thousand tiny 
points of light, and thence came familiarly 
to the bed, flitting like a golden butterfly 
over her lovely shoulders, which it lightly 
touched in passing by with a luminous kiss. 
Happy sunbeam, which the gods might well 
have envied. 

In a faint voice, like that of a sick child, 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA'S NIGHTS 


51 


Cleopatra asked to be lifted out of bed. 
Two of her women raised her in their arms 
and gently laid her on a tiger-skin stretched 
upon the floor, of which the eyes were 
formed of carbuncles and the claws of gold. 
Charmion wrapped her in a calasiris of linen 
whiter than milk, confined her hair in a net 
of woven silver threads, tied to her little feet 
cork tatbebs upon the soles of which were 
painted, in token of contempt, two grotesque 
figures, representing two men of the races of 
Nahasi and Nahmou, bound hand and foot, 
so that Cleopatra literally deserved the 
epithet, “ Conculcatrix of Nations,'’ * which 
the royal cartouche inscriptions bestow upon 
her. 

It was the hour for the bath. Cleopatra 
went to bathe, accompanied by her women. 

The baths of Cleopatra were built in the 
midst of immense gardens filled with mimo- 
sas, aloes, carob-trees, citron-trees, and Per- 
sian apple-trees, whose luxuriant freshness 

* Conculcatrice des peuples. From the Latin con- 
culcare, to trample under foot : therefore, the epi- 
thet literally signifies the “Trampler of nations.” 
— [Trans.] 


52 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


afforded a delicious contrast to the arid 
appearance of the neighboring vegetation. 
There, too, vast terraces uplifted masses of 
verdant foliage, and enabled flowers to climb 
almost to the very sky upon gigantic stair- 
ways of rose-colored granite ; vases of Pen- 
telic marble bloomed at the end of each step 
like huge lily-flowers, and the plants they 
contained seemed only their pistils ; chimeras 
caressed into form by the chisels of the most 
skilful Greek sculptors, and less stern of 
aspect than the Egyptian sphinxes, with 
their grim mien and moody attitudes, softly 
extended their limbs upon the flower-strewn 
turf, like shapely white leverettes upon a 
drawing-room carpet. These were charming 
feminine figures, with finely chiselled nostrils, 
smooth brows, small mouths, delicately dim- 
pled arms, breasts fair-rounded and daintily 
formed ; wearing earrings, necklaces, and all 
the trinkets suggested by adorable caprice ; 
whose bodies terminated in bifurcated 
fishes’ tails, like the women described by 
Horace, or extended into birds’ wings, or 
rounded into lions’ haunches, or blended 
into volutes of foliage, according to the 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS $$ 

fancies of the artist or in conformity to the 
architectural position chosen. A double row 
of these delightful monsters lined the alley 
which led from the palace to the bathing 
halls. 

At the end of this alley was a huge foun- 
tain-basin, approached by four porphyry 
stairways. Through the transparent depths 
of the diamond-clear water the steps could 
be seen descending to the bottom of the 
basin, which was strewn with gold-dust in 
lieu of sand. Here figures of women ter- 
minating in pedestals like Caryatides* 
spurted from their breasts slender jets of 
perfumed water, which fell into the basin in 
silvery dew, pitting the clear watery mirror 
with wrinkle-creating drops. In addition to 
this task these Caryatides had likewise that 
of supporting upon their heads an entabla- 
ture decorated with Nereids and Tritons in 
bas-relief, and furnished with rings of bronze 
to which the silken cords of a velarium might 
be attached. From the portico was visible 

* The Greeks and Romans usually termed such 
figures Hermae orTermini. Caryatides were, strictly, 
entire figures of women. — [Trans.] 


54 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


an extending expanse of freshly humid, 
bluish-green verdure and cool shade, a frag- 
ment of the Vale of Tempe transported to 
Egypt. The famous gardens of Semiramis 
would not have borne comparison with 
these. 

We will not pause to describe the seven 
or eight other halls of various temperature, 
with their hot and cold vapors, perfume 
boxes, cosmetics, oils, pumice stone, gloves 
of woven horsehair, and all the refinements 
of the antique balneatory art brought to the 
highest pitch of voluptuous perfection. 

Hither came Cleopatra, leaning with one 
hand upon the shoulder of Charmion. She 
had taken at least thirty steps all by herself. 
Mighty effort, enormous fatigue! A tender 
tint of rose commenced to suffuse the trans- 
parent skin of her cheeks, refreshing their 
passionate pallor; a blue network of veins 
relieved the amber blondness of her tem- 
ples; her marble forehead, low like the an- 
tique foreheads, but full and perfect in form, 
united by one faultless line with a straight 
nose, finely chiselled as a cameo, with rosy 
nostrils which the least emotion made pal- 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


55 


pitate like the nostrils of an amorous tigress ; 
the lips of her small, rounded mouth, slightly 
separated from the nose, wore a disdainful 
curve ; but an unbridled voluptuousness, an 
indescribable vital warmth, glowed in the 
brilliant crimson and humid lustre of the 
under lip. Her eyes were shaded by level 
eyelids, and eyebrows slightly arched and 
delicately outlined. We cannot attempt by 
description to convey an idea of their bril- 
liancy. It was a fire, a languor, a sparkling 
limpidity which might have made even the 
dog-headed Anubis giddy. Every glance of 
her eyes was in itself a poem richer than 
aught of Homer or Mimnermus. An im- 
perial chin, replete with force and power to 
command, worthily completed this charming 
profile. 

She stood erect upon the upper step of 
the basin, in an attitude full of proud grace ; 
her figure slightly thrown back, and one foot 
in suspense, like a goddess about to leave 
her pedestal, whose eyes still linger on 
heaven. Her robe fell in two superb folds 
from the peaks of her bosom to her feet in 
unbroken lines. Had Cleomenes been her 


56 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


contemporary and enjoyed the happiness of 
beholding her thus, he would have broken 
his Venus in despair. 

Before entering the water she bade Char- 
mion, for a new caprice, to change her silver 
hair-net; she preferred to be crowned with 
reeds and lotos-flowers, like a water divinity. 
Charmion obeyed, and her liberated hair 
fell in black cascades over her shoulders, 
and shadowed her beautiful cheeks in rich 
bunches, like ripening grapes. 

Then the linen tunic, which had been con- 
fined only by one golden clasp, glided down 
over her marble body, and fell in a white 
cloud at her feet, like the swan at the feet 
of Leda. . . . 

And Meiamoun, where was he ? 

Oh cruel lot, that so many insensible ob- 
jects should enjoy the favors which would 
ravish a lover with delight ! The wind which 
toys with a wealth of perfumed hair, or kisses 
beautiful lips with kisses which it is unable 
to appreciate ; the water which envelops an 
adorably beautiful body in one universal kiss, 
and is yet, notwithstanding, indifferent to 
that exquisite pleasure; the mirror which 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA'S NIGHTS 


57 


reflects so many charming images; the 
buskin or tatbeb which clasps a divine little 
foot — oh, what happiness lost ! 

Cleopatra dipped her pink heel in the 
water and descended a few steps. The 
quivering flood made a silver belt about her 
waist, and silver bracelets about her arms, 
and rolled in pearls like a broken necklace 
over her bosom and shoulders; her wealth 
of hair, lifted by the water, extended behind 
her like a royal mantle; even in the bath 
she was a queen. She swam to and fro, 
dived, and brought up handfuls of gold-dust 
with which she laughingly pelted some of 
her women. Again, she clung suspended 
to the balustrade of the basin, concealing or 
exposing her treasures of loveliness — now 
permitting only her lustrous and polished 
back to be seen, now showing her whole 
figure, like Venus Anadyomene, and inces- 
santly varying the aspects of her beauty. 

Suddenly she uttered a cry as shrill as that 
of Diana surprised by Actaeon. She had 
seen gleaming through the neighboring foli- 
age a burning eye, yellow and phosphoric as 
the eye of a crocodile or lion. 


58 ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 

It was Meiamoun, who, crouching behind 
a tuft of leaves, and trembling like a fawn 
in a field of wheat, was intoxicating himself 
with the dangerous pleasure of beholding the 
queen in her bath. Though brave even to 
temerity, the cry of Cleopatra passed through 
his heart, coldly piercing as the blade of a 
sword. A death-like sweat covered his 
whole body; his arteries hissed through his 
temples with a sharp sound ; the iron hand 
of anxious fear had seized him by the throat 
and was strangling him. 

The eunuchs rushed forward, lance in hand. 
Cleopatra pointed out to them the group of 
trees, where they found Meiamoun crouch- 
ing in concealment. Defence was out of the 
question. He attempted none, and suffered 
himself to be captured. They prepared to 
kill him with that cruel and stupid impassi- 
bility characteristic of eunuchs; but Cleo- 
patra, who, in the interim, had covered her- 
self with her calasiris, made signs to them 
to stop, and bring the prisoner before her. 

Meiamoun could only fall upon his knees 
and stretch forth suppliant hands to her, as 
to the altars of the gods. 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 59 

“ Are you some assassin bribed by Rome, 
or for what purpose have you entered these 
sacred precincts from which all men are ex- 
cluded ? " demanded Cleopatra with an im- 
perious gesture of interrogation. 

“ May my soul be found light in the bal- 
ance of Amenti, and may Tmei', daughter 
of the Sun and goddess of Truth, punish 
me if I have ever entertained a thought of 
evil against you, O queen!" answered 
Meiamoun, still upon his knees. 

Sincerity and loyalty were written upon 
his countenance in characters so transparent 
that Cleopatra immediately banished her sus- 
picions, and looked upon the young Egyp- 
tian with a look less stern and wrathful. 
She saw that he was beautiful. 

" Then what motive could have prompted 
you to enter a place where you could only 
expect to meet death ? " 

" I love you ! " murmured Meiamoun in a 
low, but distinct voice ; for his courage had 
returned, as in every desperate situation 
when the odds against him could be no 
worse. 

"Ah!" cried Cleopatra, bending toward 


6o 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


him, and seizing his arm with a sudden 
brusque movement, so, then, it was you 
who shot that arrow with the papyrus scroll ! 
By 0ms, the Dog of Hell, you are a very 
foolhardy wretch! ... I now recognize 
you. I long observed you wandering like a 
complaining Shade about the places where 
I dwell. . . . You were at the Procession 
of Isis, at the Panegyris of Hermonthis. 
You followed the royal cangia. Ah! you 
must have a queen ? . . . You have no 
mean ambitions. You expect, without 
doubt, to be well paid in return. . . . As- 
suredly I am going to love you. . . . Why 
not ? 

“ Queen,” returned Meiamoun with a look 
of deep melancholy, ” do not rail. I am 
mad, it is true. I have deserved death ; that 
is also true. Be humane; bid them kill 
me. 

” No; I have taken the whim to be 
clement to-day.- I will give you your life.” 

” What would you that I should do with 
life? I love you!” 

” Well, then, you shall be satisfied; you 
shall die,” answered Cleopatra. ” You have 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA*S NIGHTS 


6l 


indulged yourself in wild and extravagant 
dreams ; in fancy your desires have crossed 
an impassable threshold. You imagined 
yourself to be Caesar or Mark Antony. You 
loved the queen. In some moment of de- 
lirium you have been able to believe that, 
under some condition of things which takes 
place but once in a thousand years, Cleo- 
patra might some day love you. Well, what 
you thought impossible is actually about to 
happen. I will transform your dream into a 
reality. It pleases me, for once, to secure 
the accomplishment of a mad hope. I am 
willing to inundate you with glories and 
splendors and lightnings. I intend that 
your good fortune shall be dazzling in its 
brilliancy. You were at the bottom of the 
ladder. I am about to lift you to the sum- 
mit, abruptly, suddenly, without a transi- 
tion. I take you out of nothingness, I make 
you the equal of a god, and I plunge you 
back again into nothingness ; that is all. But 
do not presume to call me cruel or to invoke 
my pity; do not weaken when the hour 
comes. I am good to you. I lend myself 
to your folly. I have the right to order you 


62 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


to be killed at once ; but since you tell me 
that you love me, I will have you killed to- 
morrow instead. Your life belongs to me 
for one night. I am generous. I will buy 
it from you ; I could take it from you. But 
what are you doing on your knees at my 
feet ? Rise, and give me your arm, that we 
may return to the palace.” 


CHAPTER VI 

Our world of to-day is puny indeed beside 
the antique world. Our banquets are mean, 
niggardly, compared with the appalling 
sumptuousness of the Roman patricians and 
the princes of ancient Asia. Their ordinary 
repasts would in these days be regarded as 
frenzied orgies, and a whole modern city 
could subsist for eight days upon the leav- 
ings of one supper given by Lucullus to a 
few intimate friends. With our miserable 
habits we find it difficult to conceive of 
those enormous existences, realizing every- 
thing vast, strange, and most monstrously 
impossible that imagination could devise. 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


63 


Our palaces are mere stables, in which Calig- 
ula would not quarter his horse. The reti- 
nue of our wealthiest constitutional king is 
as nothing compared with that of a petty 
satrap or a Roman proconsul. The radiant 
suns which once shone upon the earth are 
forever extinguished in the nothingness of 
uniformity. Above the dark swarm of men 
no longer tower those Titanic colossi who 
bestrode the world in three paces, like the 
steeds of Homer ; no more towers of 
Lylacq ; no giant Babel scaling the sky with 
its infinity of spirals; no temples immeasur- 
able, builded with the fragments of quarried 
mountains ; no kingly terraces for which suc- 
cessive ages and generations could each erect 
but one step, and from whence some dream- 
fully reclining prince might gaze on the face 
of the world as upon a map unfolded; no 
more of those extravagantly vast cities of 
cyclopaean edifices, inextricably piled upon 
one another, with their mighty circumvalla- 
tions, their circuses roaring night and day, 
their reservoirs filled with ocean brine and 
peopled with whales and leviathans, their 
colossal stairways, their super-imposition of 


64 ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 

terraces, their tower-summits bathed in 
clouds, their giant palaces, their aqueducts, 
their multitude-vomiting gates, their shad- 
owy necropoli. Alas ! henceforth only plas- 
ter hives upon chessboard pavements. 

One marvels that men did not revolt 
against such confiscation of all riches and 
all living forces for the benefit of a few priv- 
ileged ones, and that such exorbitant fan- 
tasies should not have encountered any 
opposition on their bloody way. It was 
because those prodigious lives were the 
realizations by day of the dreams which 
haunted each man by night, the personifica- 
tions of the common ideal which the nations 
beheld living symbolized under one of those 
meteoric names that flame inextinguishably 
through the night of ages. To-day, de- 
prived of such dazzling spectacles of om- 
nipotent will, of the lofty contemplation of 
some human mind whose least wish makes 
itself visible in actions unparalleled, in enor- 
mities of granite and brass, the world be- 
comes irredeemably and hopelessly dull. 
Man is no longer represented in the realiza- 
tion of his imperial fancy. 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 65 

The story which we are writing, and the 
great name of Cleopatra which appears in it, 
have prompted us to these reflections, so ill- 
sounding, doubtless, to modern ears. But 
the spectacle of the antique world is some- 
thing so crushingly discouraging, even to 
those imaginations which deem themselves 
exhaustless, and those minds which fancy 
themselves to have conceived the utmost 
limits of fairy magnificence, that we cannot 
here forbear recording our regret and lam- 
entation that we were not cotemporaries of 
Sardanapalus ; of Teglathphalazar ; of Cleo- 
patra, queen of Egypt ; or even of Elagaba- 
lus, emperor of Rome and priest of the 
Sun. 

It is our task to describe a supreme orgie 
— a banquet compared with which the splen- 
dors of Belshazzar's feast must pale — one of 
Cleopatra's nights. How can we picture 
forth in this French tongue, so chaste, so 
icily prudish, that unbounded transport of 
passions, that huge and mighty debauch 
which feared not to mingle the double pur- 
ple of wine and blood, those furious out- 
bursts of insatiate pleasure, madly leaping 


66 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


toward the Impossible with all the wild 
ardor of senses as yet untamed by the long 
fast of Christianity ? 

The promised night should well have been 
a splendid one, for all the joys and pleasures 
possible in a human lifetime were to be con- 
centrated into the space of a few hours. It 
was necessary that the life of Meiamoun 
should be converted into a powerful elixir 
which he could imbibe at a single draught. 
Cleopatra desired to dazzle her voluntary 
victim, and plunge him into a whirlpool of 
dizzy pleasures; to intoxicate and madden 
him with the wine of orgie, so that death, 
though freely accepted, might come invisi- 
bly and unawares. 

Let us transport our readers to the ban- 
quet-hall. 

Our existing architecture offers few points 
for comparison with those vast edifices whose 
very ruins resemble the crumblings of moun- 
tains rather than the remains of buildings. 
It needed all the exaggeration of the antique 
life to animate and fill those prodigious pal- 
aces, whose halls were too lofty and vast to 
allow of any ceiling save the sky itself — a 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 67 

magnificent ceiling, and well worthy of such 
mighty architecture. 

The banquet-hall was of enormous and 
Babylonian dimensions ; the eye could not 
penetrate its immeasurable depth. Mon- 
strous columns — short, thick, and solid 
enough to sustain the pole itself — heavily 
expanded their broad-swelling shafts upon 
socles variegated with hieroglyphics, and 
sustained upon their bulging capitals gigan- 
tic arcades of granite rising by successive 
tiers, like vast stairways reversed. Between 
each two pillars a colossal sphinx of basalt, 
crowned with the pschent^ bent forward her 
oblique-eyed face and horned chin, and gazed 
into the hall with a fixed and mysterious 
look. The columns of the second tier, re- 
ceding from the first, were more elegantly 
formed, and crowned in lieu of capitals with 
four female heads addorsed, wearing caps of 
many folds and all the intricacies of the 
Egyptian headdress. Instead of sphinxes, 
bull-headed idols — impassive spectators of 
nocturnal frenzy and the furies of orgie — were 
seated upon thrones of stone, like patient 
hosts awaiting the opening of the banquet. 


68 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


A third story, constructed in a yet differ- 
ent style of architecture, with elephants of 
bronze spouting perfume from their trunks, 
crowned the edifice ; above, the sky yawned 
like a blue gulf, and the curious stars leaned 
over the frieze.* 

Prodigious stairways of porphyry, so 
highly polished that they reflected the hu- 
man body like a mirror, ascended and de- 
scended on every hand, and bound together 
these huge masses of architecture. 

We can only make a very rapid sketch 
here, in order to convey some idea of this 
awful structure, proportioned out of all hu- 

* Does not this suggest the lines which DeQuincey 
so much admired ? — 

“ A wilderness of building, sinking far, 

And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth 
Far sinking into splendor, without end. 

Fabric it seemed of diamond, and of gold. 

With alabaster domes and silver spires, 

And blazing terrace upon terrace, high 
Uplifted. Here serene pavilions bright. 

In avenues disposed ; their towers begirt 
With battlements that on their restless fronts 
Bore stars'* 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 69 

man measurements. It would require the 
pencil of Martin,* the great painter of enor- 
mities passed away, and we can present only 
a weak pen-picture in lieu of the Apocalyptic 
depth of his gloomy style ; but imagination 
may supply our deficiencies. Less fortunate 
than the painter and the musician, we can 
only present objects and ideas separately in 
slow succession. We have as yet spoken of 
the banquet-hall only, without referring to 
the guests, and yet we have but barely 
indicated its character. Cleopatra and 
Meiamoun are waiting for us. We see them 
drawing near. . . . 

Meiamoun was clad in a linen tunic con- 
stellated with stars, and a purple mantle, 

* John Martin, the English painter, whose crea- 
tions were unparalleled in breadth and depth of 
composition. His pictures seem to have made a 
powerful impression upon the highly imaginative 
author of these Romances. There is something in 
these descriptions of antique architecture that sug- 
gests the influence of such pictured fantasies as Mar- 
tin’s “ Seventh Plague ; ” “ The Heavenly City ; ” and 
perhaps, especially, the famous “ Pandemonium,” 
with its infernal splendor, in Martin’s illustrations 
to “ Paradise Lost,” — [Trans. 


70 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


and wore a fillet about his locks, like an 
Oriental king. Cleopatra was apparelled in 
a robe of pale green, open at either side, and 
clasped with golden bees. Two bracelets of 
immense pearls gleamed around her naked 
arms; upon her head glimmered the golden- 
pointed diadem. Despite the smile on her 
lips, a slight cloud of preoccupation shad- 
owed her fair forehead, and from time to 
time her brows became knitted in a feverish 
manner. What thoughts could trouble the 
great queen ? As for Meiamoun, his face 
wore the ardent and luminous look of one in 
ecstasy or vision ; light beamed and radiated 
from his brow and temples, surrounding his 
head with a golden nimbus, like one of the 
twelve great gods of Olympus. 

A deep, heartfelt joy illumined his every 
feature. He had embraced his restless- 
winged chimera, and it had not flown from 
him ; he had reached the goal of his life. 
Though he were to live to the age of Nes- 
tor or Priam, though he should behold his 
veined temples hoary with locks whiter than 
those of the high priest of Ammon, he could 
never know another new experience, never 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


71 


feel another new pleasure. His maddest 
hopes had been so much more than realized 
that there was nothing in the world left for 
him to desire. 

Cleopatra seated him beside her upon a 
throne with golden griffins on either side, 
and clapped her little hands together. In- 
stantly lines of fire, bands of sparkling light, 
outlined all the projections of the architec- 
ture — the eyes of the sphinxes flamed with 
phosphoric lightnings ; the bull-headed idols 
breathed flame; the elephants, in lieu of 
perfumed water, spouted aloft bright col- 
umns of crimson fire; arms of bronze, each 
bearing a torch, started from the walls, and 
blazing aigrettes bloomed in the sculptured 
hearts of the lotos flowers. 

Huge blue flames palpitated in tripods of 
brass; giant candelabras shook their dishev- 
elled light in the midst of ardent vapors; 
everything sparkled, glittered, beamed. 
Prismatic irises crossed and shattered each 
other in the air. The facets of the cups, 
the angles of the marbles and jaspers, the 
chiselling of the vases — all caught a sparkle, 
a gleam, or a flash as of lightning. Radi- 


72 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


ance streamed in torrents and leaped from 
step to step like a cascade, over the porphyry 
stairways. It seemed the reflection of a 
conflagration on some broad river. Had 
the Queen of Sheba ascended thither she 
would have caught up the folds of her robe, 
and believed herself walking in water, as 
when she stepped upon the crystal pave- 
ments of Solomon. Viewed through that 
burning haze, the monstrous figures of the 
colossi, the animals, the hieroglyphics, 
seemed to become animated and to live with 
a factitious life; the black marble rams 
bleated ironically, and clashed their gilded 
horns; the idols breathed harshly through 
their panting nostrils. 

The orgie was at its height : the dishes of 
phenicopters’ tongues, and the livers of 
scarus fish; the eels fattened upon human 
flesh, and cooked in brine; the dishes of 
peacock’s brains; the boars stuffed with liv- 
ing birds ; and all the marvels of the antique 
banquets were heaped upon the three table- 
surfaces of the gigantic triclinium. The 
wines of Crete, of Massicus, and of Falernus 
foamed up in cratera wreathed with roses. 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


73 


and filled by Asiatic pages whose beautiful 
flowing hair served the guests to wipe their 
hands upon. Musicians playing upon the 
sistrum, the tympanum, the sambuke, and 
the harp with one-and-twenty strings filled 
all the upper galleries, and mingled their 
harmonies with the tempest of sound that 
hovered over the feast. Even the deep- 
voiced thunder could not have made itself 
heard there. 

Meiamoun, whose head was lying on Cleo- 
patra’s shoulder, felt as though his reason 
were leaving him. The banquet-hall whirled 
around him like a vast architectural night- 
mare ; through the dizzy glare he beheld per- 
spectives and colonnades without end ; new 
zones of porticoes seemed to uprear them- 
selves upon the real fabric, and bury their 
summits in heights of sky to which Babel 
never rose. Had he not felt within his hand 
the soft, cool hand of Cleopatra, he would 
have believed himself transported into an 
enchanted world by some witch of Thessaly 
or Magian of Persia. 

Toward the close of the repast hump- 
backed dwarfs and mummers engaged in 


74 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


grotesque dances and combats; then young 
Egyptian and Greek maidens, representing 
the black and white Hours, danced with in- 
imitable grace a voluptuous dance after the 
Ionian manner. 

Cleopatra herself arose from her throne, 
threw aside her royal mantle, replaced her 
starry diadem with a garland of flowers, 
attached golden crotali"^ to her alabaster 
hands, and began to dance before Meiamoun, 
who was ravished with delight. Her beau- 
tiful arms, rounded like the handles of an 
alabaster vase, shook out bunches of spark- 
ling notes, and her crotali prattled with 
ever-increasing volubility. Poised on the 
pink tips of her little feet, she approached 
swiftly to graze the forehead of Meiamoun 
with a kiss ; then she recommenced her won- 
drous art, and flitted around him, now back- 
ward-leaning, with head reversed, eyes half 
closed, arms lifelessly relaxed, locks un- 
curled and loose-hanging like a Bacchante 
of Mount Maenalus; now again, active, ani- 
mated, laughing, fluttering, more tireless 
and capricious in her movements than the 
* Antique castanets. — [Trans. 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


75 


pilfering bee. Heart-consuming love, sen- 
sual pleasure, burning passion, youth inex- 
haustible and ever-fresh, the promise of bliss 
to come — she expressed all. . . . 

The modest stars had ceased to contem- 
plate the scene ; their golden eyes could not 
endure such a spectacle; the heaven itself 
was blotted out, and a dome of flaming 
vapor covered the hall. 

Cleopatra seated herself once more by 
Meiamoun. Night advanced; the last of 
the black Hours was about to take flight; 
a faint blue glow entered with bewildered 
aspect into the tumult of ruddy light as a 
moonbeam falls into a furnace; the upper 
arcades became suffused with pale azure 
tints — day was breaking. 

Meiamoun took the horn vase which an 
Ethiopian slave of sinister countenance pre- 
sented to him, and which contained a poison 
so violent that it would have caused any 
other vase to burst asunder. Flinging his 
whole life to his mistress in one last look, 
he lifted to his lips the fatal cup in which 
the envenomed liquor boiled up, hissing. 

Cleopatra turned pale, and laid her hand 


76 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


on Meiamoun’s arm to stay the act. His 
courage touched her. She was about to 
say, “ Live to love me yet, I desire it ! . . . " 
when the sound of a clarion was heard. Four 
heralds-at-arms entered the banquet-hall on 
horseback ; they were officers of Mark An- 
tony, and rode but a short distance in ad- 
vance of their master. Cleopatra silently 
loosened the arm of Meiamoun. A long 
ray of sunlight suddenly played upon her 
forehead, as though trying to replace her 
absent diadem. 

“You see the moment has come; it is 
daybreak, it is the hour when happy dreams 
take flight,” said Meiamoun. Then he 
emptied the fatal vessel at a draught, and 
fell as though struck by lightning. Cleo- 
patra bent her head, and one burning tear — 
the only one she had ever shed — fell into 
her cup to mingle with the molten pearl. 

“By Hercules, my fair queen! I made 
all speed in vain. I see I have come too 
late,” cried Mark Antony, entering the ban- 
quet-hall, “ the supper is over. But what 
signifies this corpse upon the pavement ? ” 

“ Oh, nothing! ” returned Cleopatra, with 


ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS 


77 


a smile; “ only a poison I was testing with 
the idea of using it upon myself should Au- 
gustus take me prisoner. My dear Lord, 
will you not please to take a seat beside me, 
and watch those Greek buffoons dance ? 



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«ICL. 

CLARiraONDE 


Brother, you ask me if I have ever 
loved. Yes. My story is a strange and ter- 
rible one ; and though I am sixty-six years 
of age, I scarcely dare even now to disturb the 
ashes of that memory. To you I can refuse 
nothing; but I should not relate such a tale 
to any less experienced mind. So strange 
were the circumstances of my story, that I 
can scarcely believe myself to have ever 
actually been a party to them. For more 
than three years I remained the victim of a 
most singular and diabolical illusion. Poor 
country priest though I was, I led every night 
in a dream — would to God it had been all a 
dream ! — a most worldly life, a damning life, 
a life of Sardanapalus. One single look too 

* “ La Morte Amoureuse"' 

6 


82 


CLARIMONDE 


freely cast upon a woman well-nigh caused 
me to lose my soul ; but finally by the grace 
of God and the assistance of my patron 
saint, I succeeded in casting out the evil 
spirit that possessed me. My daily life was 
long interwoven with a nocturnal life of a 
totally different character. By day I was a 
priest of the Lord, occupied with prayer and 
sacred things; by night, from the instant 
that I closed my eyes I became a young 
nobleman, a fine connoisseur in women, 
dogs, and horses; gambling, drinking, and 
blaspheming, and when I awoke at early 
daybreak, it seemed to me, on the other 
hand, that I had been sleeping, and had 
only dreamed that I was a priest. Of this 
somnambulistic life there now remains to 
me only the recollection of certain scenes 
and words which I cannot banish from my 
memory ; but although I never actually left 
the walls of my presbytery, one would think 
to hear me speak that I were a man who, 
weary of all worldly pleasures, had become 
a religious, seeking to end a tempestuous 
life in the service of God, rather than an 
humble seminarist who has grown old ip 


CLARIMONDE 


83 


this obscure curacy, situated in the depths 
of the woods and even isolated from the life 
of the century. 

Yes, I have loved as none in the world 
ever loved — with an insensate and furious 
passion — so violent that I am astonished it 
did not cause my heart to burst asunder. 
Ah, what nights — what nights! 

From my earliest childhood I had felt a 
vocation to the priesthood, so that all my 
studies were directed with that idea in view. 
Up to the age of twenty-four my life had 
been only a prolonged novitiate. Having 
completed my course of theology I succes- 
sively received all the minor orders, and my 
superiors judged me worthy, despite my 
youth, to pass the last awful degree. My 
ordination was fixed for Easter week. 

I had never gone into the world. My 
world was confined by the walls of the col- 
lege and the seminary. I knew in a vague 
sort of a way that there was something 
called Woman, but I never permitted my 
thoughts to dwell on such a subject, and I 
lived in a state of perfect innocence. Twice a 
year only I saw my infirm and aged mother. 


84 


CLARIMONDE 


and in those visits were comprised my sole 
relations with the outer world. 

I regretted nothing; I felt not the least 
hesitation at taking the last irrevocable step ; 
I was filled with joy and impatience. Never 
did a betrothed lover count the slow hours 
with more feverish ardor; I slept only to 
dream that I was saying mass; I believed 
there could be nothing in the world more 
delightful than to be a priest ; I would have 
refused to be a king or a poet in preference. 
My ambition could conceive of no loftier 
aim. 

I tell you this in order to show you that 
what happened to me could not have hap- 
pened in the natural order of things, and to 
enable you to understand that I was the vic- 
tim of an inexplicable fascination. 

At last the great day came. I walked to 
the church with a step so light that I fan- 
cied myself sustained in air, or that I had 
wings upon my shoulders. I believed myself 
an angel, and wondered at the sombre and 
thoughtful faces of my companions, for there 
were several of us. I had passed all the 
night in prayer, and was in a condition well- 


CLARIMONDE 


8S 


nigh bordering on ecstasy. The bishop, a 
venerable old man, seemed to me God the 
Father leaning over his Eternity, and I 
beheld Heaven through the vault of the 
temple. 

You well know the details of that cere- 
mony — the benediction, the communion un- 
der both forms, the anointing of the palms 
of the hands with the Oil of Catechumens, 
and then the holy sacrifice offered in concert 
with the bishop. 

Ah, truly spake Job when he declared 
that the imprudent man is one who hath 
not made a covenant with his eyes ! I acci- 
dentally lifted my head, which until then I 
had kept down, and beheld before me, so 
close that it seemed that I could have 
touched her — although she was actually a 
considerable distance from me and on the 
further side of the sanctuary railing — a young 
woman of extraordinary beauty, and attired 
with royal magnificence. It seemed as 
though scales had suddenly fallen from my 
eyes. I felt like a blind man who unex- 
pectedly recovers his sight. The bishop, so 
radiantly glorious but an instant before, sud- 


86 


CLARIMONDE 


denly vanished away, the tapers paled upon 
their golden candlesticks like stars in the 
dawn, and a vast darkness seemed to fill the 
whole church. The charming creature ap- 
peared in bright relief against the back- 
ground of that darkness, like some angelic 
revelation. She seemed herself radiant, and 
radiating light rather than receiving it. 

I lowered my eyelids, firmly resolved not 
to again open them, that I might not be in- 
fluenced by external objects, for distraction 
had gradually taken possession of me until 
I hardly knew what I was doing. 

In another minute,nevertheless,I reopened 
my eyes, for through my eyelashes I still 
beheld her, all sparkling with prismatic col- 
ors, and surrounded with such a purple pe- 
numbra as one beholds in gazing at the sun. 

Oh, how beautiful she was! The great- 
est painters, who followed ideal beauty into 
heaven itself, and thence brought back to 
earth the true portrait of the Madonna, 
never in their delineations even approached 
that wildly beautiful reality which I saw 
before me. Neither the verses of the poet 
nor the palette of the artist could convey 


CLARIMONDE 


87 


any conception of her. She was rather tall, 
with a form and bearing of a goddess. Her 
hair, of a soft blonde hue, was parted in the 
midst and flowed back over her temples in 
two rivers of rippling gold; she seemed a 
diademed queen. Her forehead, bluish- 
white in its transparency, extended its calm 
breadth above the arches of her eyebrows, 
which by a strange singularity were almost 
black, and admirably relieved the effect of 
sea-green eyes of unsustainable vivacity and 
brilliancy. What eyes ! With a single flash 
they could have decided a man's destiny. 
They had a life, a limpidity, an ardor, a hu- 
mid light which I have never seen in human 
eyes ; they shot forth rays like arrows, which 
I could distinctly see enter my heart. I 
know not if the fire which illumined them 
came from heaven or from hell, but as- 
suredly it came from one or the other. That 
woman was either an angel or a demon, per- 
haps both. Assuredly she never sprang 
from the flank of Eve, our common mother. 
Teeth of the most lustrous pearl gleamed in 
her ruddy smile, and at every inflection of 
her lips little dimples appeared in the satiny 


88 


CLARIMONDE 


rose of her adorable cheeks. There was a 
delicacy and pride in the regal outline of 
her nostrils bespeaking noble blood. Agate 
gleams played over the smooth lustrous 
skin of her half-bare shoulders, and strings 
of great blonde pearls — almost equal to her 
neck in beauty of color — descended upon her 
bosom. From time to time she elevated 
her head with the undulating grace of a 
startled serpent or peacock, thereby impart- 
ing a quivering motion to the high lace ruff 
which surrounded it like a silver trellis-work. 

She wore a robe of orange-red velvet, and 
from her wide ermine-lined sleeves there 
peeped forth patrician hands of infinite deli- 
cacy, and so ideally transparent that, like 
the fingers of Aurora, they permitted the 
light to shine through them. 

All these details I can recollect at this 
moment as plainly as though they were of 
yesterday, for notwithstanding I was greatly 
troubled at the time, nothing escaped me; 
the faintest touch of shading, the little dark 
speck at the point of the chin, the imper- 
ceptible down at the corners of the lips, the 
velvety floss upon the brow, the quivering 


CLARIMONDE 


89 


shadows of the eyelashes upon the cheeks, 
I could notice everything with astonishing 
lucidity of perception. 

And gazing I felt opening within me gates 
that had until then remained closed ; vents 
long obstructed became all clear, permitting 
glimpses of unfamiliar perspectives within; 
life suddenly made itself visible to me under 
a totally novel aspect. I felt as though I 
had just been born into a new world and a 
new order of things. A frightful anguish 
commenced to torture my heart as with 
red-hot pincers. Every successive minute 
seemed to me at once but a second and yet 
a century. Meanwhile the ceremony was 
proceeding, and I shortly found myself 
transported far from that world of which my 
newly-born desires were furiously besieging 
the entrance. Nevertheless I answered 
“ Yes " when I wished to say ' ‘ No, ” though 
all within me protested against the violence 
done to my soul by my tongue. Some oc- 
cult power seemed to force the words from 
my throat against my will. Thus it is, per- 
haps, that so many young girls walk to the 
altar firmly resolved to refuse in a startling 


90 


CLARIMONDE 


manner the husband imposed upon them, 
and that yet not one ever fulfils her inten- 
tion. Thus it is, doubtless, that so many 
poor novices take the veil, though they have 
resolved to tear it into shreds at the moment 
when called upon to utter the vows. One 
dares not thus cause so great a scandal to 
all present, nor deceive the expectation of 
so many people. All those eyes, all those 
wills seem to weigh down upon you like a 
cope of lead ; and, moreover, measures have 
been so well taken, everything has been so 
thoroughly arranged beforehand and after a 
fashion so evidently irrevocable, that the 
will yields to the weight of circumstances 
and utterly breaks down. 

As the ceremony proceeded the features 
of the fair unknown changed their expres- 
sion. Her look had at first been one of 
caressing tenderness ; it changed to an air of 
disdain and of mortification, as though at 
not having been able to make itself under- 
stood. 

With an effort of will sufficient to have 
uprooted a mountain, I strove to cry out 
that I would not be a priest, but I could 


CLARIMONDE 


91 


not speak ; my tongue seemed nailed to my 
palate, and I found it impossible to express 
my will by the least syllable of negation. 
Though fully awake, I felt like one under 
the influence of a nightmare, who vainly 
strives to shriek out the one word upon 
which life depends. 

She seemed conscious of the martyrdom I 
was undergoing, and, as though to encour- 
age me, she gave me a look replete with 
divinest promise. Her eyes were a poem; 
their every glance was a song. 

She said to me ; 

“ If thou wilt be mine, I shall make thee 
happier than God Himself in His paradise. 
The angels themselves will be jealous of 
thee. Tear off that funeral shroud in which 
thou art about to wrap thyself. I am 
Beauty, I am Youth, I am Life. Come to 
me! Together we shall be Love. Can 
Jehovah offer thee aught in exchange ? 
Our lives will flow on like a dream, in one 
eternal kiss. 

“ Fling forth the wine of that chalice, and 
thou art free. I will conduct thee to the 
Unknown Isles. Thou shalt sleep in my 


92 


CLARIMONDE 


bosom Upon a bed of massy gold under a 
silver pavilion, for I love thee and would 
take thee away from thy God, before whom 
so many noble hearts pour forth floods of 
love which never reach even the steps of 
His throne ! " 

These words seemed to float to my ears 
in a rhythm of infinite sweetness, for her 
look was actually sonorous, and the utter- 
ances of her eyes were reechoed in the 
depths of my heart as though living lips had 
breathed them into my life. I felt myself 
willing to renounce God, and yet my tongue 
mechanically fulfilled all the formalities of 
the ceremony. The fair one gave me an- 
other look, so beseeching, so despairing that 
keen blades seemed to pierce my heart, and 
I felt my bosom transfixed by more swords 
than those of Our Lady of Sorrows. 

All was consummated; I had become a 
priest. 

Never was deeper anguish painted on 
human face than upon hers. The maiden 
who beholds her afiianced lover suddenly 
fall dead at her side, the mother bending 
over the empty cradle of her child. Eve 


CLARIMONDE 


93 


seated at the threshold of the gate of Para- 
dise, the miser who finds a stone substituted 
for his stolen treasure, the poet who acci- 
dentally permits the only manuscript of his 
finest work to fall into the fire, could not 
wear a look so despairing, so inconsolable. 
All the blood had abandoned her charming 
face, leaving it whiter than marble ; her 
beautiful arms hung lifelessly on either side 
of her body as though their muscles had 
suddenly relaxed, and she sought the sup- 
port of a pillar, for her yielding limbs almost 
betrayed her. As for myself, I staggered 
toward the door of the church, livid as death, 
my forehead bathed with a sweat bloodier 
than that of Calvary ; I felt as though I were 
being strangled; the vault seemed to have 
flattened down upon my shoulders, and it 
seemed to me that my head alone sustained 
the whole weight of the dome. 

As I was about to cross the threshold a , 
hand suddenly caught mine — a woman’s 
hand ! I had never till then touched the 
hand of any woman. It was cold as a ser- 
pent’s skin, and yet its impress remained 
upon my wrist, burnt there as though 


94 


CLARIMONDE 


branded by a glowing iron. It was she. 
“Unhappy man! Unhappy man! What 
hast thou done ? “ she exclaimed in a low 
voice, and immediately disappeared in the 
crowd. 

The aged bishop passed by. He cast a 
severe and scrutinizing look upon me. My 
face presented the wildest aspect imagin- 
able; I blushed and turned pale alternately; 
dazzling lights flashed before my eyes. A 
companion took pity on me. He seized my 
arm and led me out. I could not possibly 
have found my way back to the seminary 
unassisted. At the corner of a street, while 
the young priest’s attention was momen- 
tarily turned in another direction, a negro 
page, fantastically garbed, approached me, 
and without pausing on his way slipped into 
my hand a little pocket-book with gold-em- 
broidered corners, at the same time giving 
me a sign to hide it. I concealed it in my 
sleeve, and there kept it until I found my- 
self alone in my cell. Then I opened the 
clasp. There were only two leaves within, 
bearing the words, “ Clarimonde. At the 
Concini Palace.” So little acquainted was 


CLARIMONDE 


95 


I at that time with the things of this world 
that I had never heard of Clarimonde, cele- 
brated as she was, and I had no idea as to 
where the Concini Palace was situated. I 
hazarded a thousand conjectures, each more 
extravagant than the last; but, in truth, I 
cared little whether she were a great lady or 
a courtesan, so that I could but see her once 
more. 

My love, although the growth of a single 
hour, had taken imperishable root. I did 
not even dream of attempting to tear it up, 
so fully was I convinced such a thing would 
be impossible. That woman had completely 
taken possession of me. One look from her 
had sufficed to change my very nature. She 
had breathed her will into my life, and I no 
longer lived in myself, but in her and for 
her. I gave myself up to a thousand ex- 
travagancies. I kissed the place upon my 
hand which she had touched, and I repeated 
her name over and over again for hours in 
succession. I only needed to close my eyes 
in order to see her distinctly as though she 
were actually present; and I reiterated to 
myself the words she had uttered in my ear 


96 


CLARIMONDE 


at the church porch : “Unhappy man! Un- 
happy man! What hast thou done?” I 
comprehended at last the full horror of my 
situation, and the funereal and awful re- 
straints of the state into which I had just 
entered became clearly revealed to me. To 
be a priest! — that is, to be chaste, to never 
love, to observe no distinction of sex or age, 
to turn from the sight of all beauty, to put 
out one's own eyes, to hide forever crouch- 
ing in the chill shadows of some church or 
cloister, to visit none but the dying, to 
watch by unknown corpses, and ever bear 
about with one the black soutane as a garb 
of mourning for one’s self, so that your very 
dress might serve as a pall for your coffin. 

And I felt life rising within me like a sub- 
terranean lake, expanding and overflowing; 
my blood leaped fiercely through my ar- 
teries ; my long-restrained youth suddenly 
burst into active being, like the aloe which 
blooms but once in a hundred years, and 
then bursts into blossom with a clap of 
thunder. 

What could I do in order to see Clari- 
monde once more ? I had no pretext to 


CLARIMONDE 


97 


offer for desiring to leave the seminary, not 
knowing any person in the city. I would 
not even be able to remain there but a short 
time, and was only waiting my assignment 
to the curacy which I must thereafter oc- 
cupy. I tried to remove the bars of the 
window ; but it was at a fearful height from 
the ground, and I found that as I had no 
ladder it would be useless to think of escap- 
ing thus. And, furthermore, I could de- 
scend thence only by night in any event, 
and afterward how should I be able to find 
my way through the inextricable labyrinth 
of streets ? All these difficulties, which to 
many would have appeared altogether insig- 
nificant, were gigantic to me, a poor semi- 
narist who had fallen in love only the day 
before for the first time, without experience, 
without money, without attire. 

“ Ah ! ” cried I to myself in my blindness, 
“ were I not a priest I could have seen her 
every day ; I might have been her lover, her 
spouse. Instead of being wrapped in this 
dismal shroud of mine I would have had gar- 
ments of silk and velvet, golden chains, a 
sword, and fair plumes like other handsome 


3 


98 


CLARIMONDE 


young cavaliers. My hair, instead of being 
dishonored by the tonsure, would flow down 
upon my neck in waving curls ; I would have 
a fine waxed mustache; I would be a gal- 
lant.” But one hour passed before an altar, 
a few hastily articulated words, had forever 
cut me off from the number of the living, 
and I had myself sealed down the stone of 
my own tomb; I had with my own hand 
bolted the gate of my prison ! 

I went to the window. The sky was 
beautifully blue ; the trees had donned their 
spring robes; nature seemed to be making 
parade of an ironical joy. The Place was 
filled with people, some going, others com- 
ing; young beaux and young beauties were 
sauntering in couples toward the groves and 
gardens; merry youths passed by, cheerily 
trolling refrains of drinking songs — it was 
all a picture of vivacity, life, animation, 
gayety, which formed a bitter contrast with 
my mourning and my solitude. On the 
steps of the gate sat a young mother playing 
with her child. She kissed its little rosy 
mouth still impearled with drops of milk, 
and performed, in order to amuse it, a thou- 


CLARIMONDE 


99 


sand divine little puerilities such as only 
mothers know how to invent. The father 
standing at a little distance smiled gently 
upon the charming group, and with folded 
arms seemed to hug his joy to his heart. I 
could not endure that spectacle. I closed 
the window with violence, and flung myself 
on my bed, my heart filled with frightful 
hate and jealousy, and gnawed my fingers 
and my bedcovers like a tiger that has passed 
ten days without food. 

I know not how long I remained in this 
condition, but at last, while writhing on the 
bed in a fit of spasmodic fury, I suddenly 
perceived the Abb^ S^rapion, who was stand- 
ing erect in the centre of the room, watching 
me attentively. Filled with shame of my- 
self, I let my head fall upon my breast and 
covered my face with my hands. 

Romuald, my friend, something very ex- 
traordinary is transpiring within you,” ob- 
served S^rapion, after a few moments' 
silence; “your conduct is altogether inex- 
plicable. You — always so quiet, so pious, 
so gentle — you to rage in your cell like a 
wild beast! Take heed, brother — do not 


lOO 


CLARIMONDE 


listen to the suggestions of the devil. The 
Evil Spirit, furious that you have conse- 
crated yourself forever to the Lord, is prowl- 
ing around you like a ravening wolf and 
making a last effort to obtain possession of 
you. Instead of allowing yourself to be 
conquered, my dear Romuald, make to your- 
self a cuirass of prayers, a buckler of morti- 
fications, and combat the enemy like a val- 
iant man ; you will then assuredly overcome 
him. Virtue must be proved by tempta- 
tion, and gold comes forth purer from the 
hands of the assayer. Fear not. Never 
allow yourself to become discouraged. The 
most watchful and steadfast souls are at mo- 
ments liable to such temptation. Pray, fast, 
meditate, and the Evil Spirit will depart 
from you.” 

The words of the Abb6 S^rapion restored 
me to myself, and I became a little more 
calm. ” I came,” he continued, ” to tell 
you that you have been appointed to the 

curacy of C . The priest who had charge 

of it has just died, and Monseigneur the 
Bishop has ordered me to have you installed 
there at once. Be ready, therefore, to start 


CLARIMONDE 


lOI 


to-morrow." I responded with an inclina- 
tion of the head, and the Abb^ retired. I 
opened my missal and commenced reading 
some prayers, but the letters became con- 
fused and blurred under my eyes, the thread 
of the ideas entangled itself hopelessly in 
my brain, and the volume at last fell from 
my hands without my being aware of it. 

To leave to-morrow without having been 
able to see her again, to add yet another 
barrier to the many already interposed be- 
tween us, to lose forever all hope of being 
able to meet her, except, indeed, through a 
miracle! Even to write her, alas! would be 
impossible, for by whom could I despatch 
my letter ? With my sacred character of 
priest, to whom could I dare unbosom my- 
self, in whom could I confide ? I became a 
prey to the bitterest anxiety. 

Then suddenly recurred to me the words 
of the Abb^ S^rapion regarding the artifices 
of the devil; and the strange character of 
the adventure, the supernatural beauty of 
Clarimonde, the phosphoric light of her eyes, 
the burning imprint of her hand, the agony 
into which she had thrown me, the sudden 


102 


CLARIMONDE 


change wrought within me when all my piety 
vanished in a single instant — these and other 
things clearly testified to the work of the 
Evil One, and perhaps that satiny hand was 
but the glove which concealed his claws. 
Filled with terror at these fancies, I again 
picked up the missal which had slipped from 
my knees and fallen upon the floor, and 
once more gave myself up to prayer. 

Next morning S^rapion came to take me 
away. Two mules freighted with our mis- 
erable valises awaited us at the gate. He 
mounted one, and I the other as well as I 
knew how. 

As we passed along the streets of the city, 
I gazed attentively at all the windows and 
balconies in the hope of seeing Clarimonde, 
but it was yet early in the morning, and the 
city had hardly opened its eyes. Mine 
sought to penetrate the blinds and window- 
curtains of all the palaces before which we 
were passing. S^rapion doubtless attributed 
this curiosity to my admiration of the archi- 
tecture, for he slackened the pace of his ani- 
mal in order to give me time to look around 
me. At last we passed the city gates and 


CLARIMONDE 


103 


commenced to mount the hill beyond. 
When we arrived at its summit I turned to 
take a last look at the place where Clari- 
monde dwelt. The shadow of a great cloud 
hung over all the city ; the contrasting colors 
of its blue and red roofs were lost in the uni- 
form half-tint, through which here and there 
floated upward, like white flakes of foam, 
the smoke of freshly kindled fires. By a 
singular optical effect one edifice, which sur- 
passed in height all the neighboring build- 
ings that were still dimly veiled by the 
vapors, towered up, fair and lustrous with 
the gilding of a solitary beam of sunlight — 
although actually more than a league away 
it seemed quite near. The smallest details 
of its architecture were plainly distinguish- 
able — the turrets, the platforms, the win- 
dow-casements, and even the swallow-tailed 
weather vanes. 

“ What is that palace I see over there, all 
lighted up by the sun ?" I asked S^rapion. 
He shaded his eyes with his hand, and hav- 
ing looked in the direction indicated, re- 
plied: “It is the ancient palace which the 
Prince Concini has given to the courte- 


104 


CLARIMONDE 


san Clarimonde. Awful things are done 
there ! " 

At that instant, I know not yet whether 
it was a reality or an illusion, I fancied I 
saw gliding along the terrace a shapely white 
figure, which gleamed for a moment in pass- 
ing and as quickly vanished. It was Clari- 
monde. 

Oh, did she know that at that very hour, 
all feverish and restless — from the height of 
the rugged road which separated me from 
her and which, alas ! I could never more de- 
scend — I was directing my eyes upon the 
palace where she dwelt, and which a mock- 
ing beam of sunlight seemed to bring nigh 
to me, as though inviting me to enter therein 
as its lord ? Undoubtedly she must have 
known it, for her soul was too sympatheti- 
cally united with mine not to have felt its 
least emotional thrill, and that subtle sym- 
pathy it must have been which prompted 
her to climb — although clad only in her 
night-dress — to the summit of the terrace, 
amid the icy dews of the morning. 

The shadow gained the palace, and the 
scene became to the eye only a motionless 


CLARIMONDE 


lOS 

ocean of roofs and gables, amid which one 
mountainous undulation was distinctly visi- 
ble. S^rapion urged his mule forward, my 
own at once followed at the same gait, and 
a sharp angle in the road at last hid the city 
of S forever from my eyes, as I was des- 

tined never to return thither. At the close 
of a weary three-days’ journey through dis- 
mal country fields, we caught sight of the 
cock upon the steeple of the church which 
I was to take charge of, peeping above the 
trees, and after having followed some wind- 
ing roads fringed with thatched cottages and 
little gardens, we found ourselves in front 
of the facade, which certainly possessed few 
features of magnificence. A porch orna- 
mented with some mouldings, and two or 
three pillars rudely hewn from sandstone; 
a tiled roof with counterforts of the same 
sandstone as the pillars, that was all. To 
the left lay the cemetery, overgrown with 
high weeds, and having a great iron cross 
rising up in its centre; to the right stood 
the presbytery, under the shadow of the 
church. It was a house of the most extreme 
simplicity and frigid cleanliness. We en- 


io6 


CLARIMONDE 


tered the enclosure. A few chickens were 
picking up some oats scattered upon the 
ground ; accustomed, seemingly, to the 
black habit of ecclesiastics, they showed no 
fear of our presence and scarcely troubled 
themselves to get out of our way. A hoarse, 
wheezy barking fell upon our ears, and we 
saw an aged dog running toward us. 

It was my predecessor’s dog. He had 
dull bleared eyes, grizzled hair, and every 
mark of the greatest age to which a dog can 
possibly attain. I patted him gently, and 
he proceeded at once to march along beside 
me with an air of satisfaction unspeakable. 
A very old woman, who had been the house- 
keeper of the former cur^, also came to meet 
us, and after having invited me into a little 
back parlor, asked whether I intended to 
retain her. I replied that I would take care 
of her, and the dog, and the chickens, and 
all the furniture her master had bequeathed 
her at his death. At this she became fairly 
transported with joy, and the Abb^ Serapion 
at once paid her the price which she asked 
for her little property. 

As soon as my installation was over, the 


CLARIMONDE 


107 


Abb^ S^rapion returned to the seminary. I 
was, therefore, left alone, with no one but 
myself to look to for aid or counsel. The 
thought of Clarimonde again began to haunt 
me, and in spite of all my endeavors to ban- 
ish it, I always found it present in my medi- 
tations. One evening, while promenading in 
my little garden along the walks bordered 
with box-plants, I fancied that I saw through 
the elm-trees the figure of a woman, who fol- 
lowed my every movement, and that I beheld 
two sea-green eyes gleaming through the 
foliage ; but it was only an illusion, and on 
going round to the other side of the garden, 
I could find nothing except a footprint on 
the sanded walk — a footprint so small that 
it seemed to have been made by the foot of 
a child. The garden was enclosed by very 
high walls. I searched every nook and cor- 
ner of it, but could discover no one there. 
I have never succeeded in fully accounting 
for this circumstance, which, after all, was 
nothing compared with the strange things 
which happened to me afterward. 

For a whole year I lived thus, filling all 
the duties of my calling with the most scru- 


io8 


CLARIMONDE 


pulous exactitude, praying and fasting, ex- 
horting and lending ghostly aid to the sick, 
and bestowing alms even to the extent of 
frequently depriving myself of the very nec- 
essaries of life. But I felt a great aridness 
within me, and the sources of grace seemed 
closed against me. I never found that hap- 
piness which should spring from the fulfil- 
ment of a holy mission ; my thoughts were 
far away, and the words of Clarimonde wer^ 
ever upon my lips like an involuntary re- 
frain. Oh, brother, meditate well on this! 
Through having but once lifted my eyes to 
look upon a woman, through one fault ap- 
parently so venial, I have for years remained 
a victim to the most miserable agonies, and 
the happiness of my life has been destroyed 
forever. 

I will not longer dwell upon those defeats, 
or on those inward victories invariably fol- 
lowed by yet more terrible falls, but will at 
once proceed to the facts of my story. One 
night my door-bell was long and violently 
rung. The aged housekeeper arose and 
opened to the stranger, and the figure of a 
man, whose complexion was deeply bronzed. 


CLARIMONDE 


109 


and who was richly clad in a foreign cos- 
tume, with a poniard at his girdle, appeared 
under the rays of Barbara’s lantern. Her 
first impulse was one of terror, but the 
stranger reassured her, and* stated that he 
desired to see me at once on matters relat- 
ing to my holy calling. Barbara invited him 
upstairs, where I was on the point of retir- 
ing. The stranger told me that his mistress, 
a very noble lady, was lying at the point of 
death, and desired to see a priest. I replied 
that I was prepared to follow him, took with 
me the sacred articles necessary for extreme 
unction, and descended in all haste. Two 
horses black as the night itself stood with- 
out the gate, pawing the ground with im- 
patience, and veiling their chests with long 
streams of smoky vapor exhaled from their 
nostrils. He held the stirrup and aided me 
to mount upon one; then, merely laying his 
hand upon the pummel of the saddle, he 
vaulted on the other, pressed the animal’s 
sides with his knees, and loosened rein. 
The horse bounded forward with the velocity 
of an arrow. Mine, of which the stranger 
held the bridle, also started off at a swift 


no 


CLARIMONDE 


gallop, keeping up with his companion. 
We devoured the road. The ground flowed 
backward beneath us in a long streaked line 
of pale gray, and the black silhouettes of the 
trees seemed fleeing by us on either side like 
an army in rout. We passed through a for- 
est so profoundly gloomy that I felt my flesh 
creep in the chill darkness with superstitious 
fear. The showers of bright sparks which 
flew from the stony road under the ironshod 
feet of our horses, remained glowing in our 
wake like a fiery trail; and had anyone at 
that hour of the night beheld us both — my 
guide and myself — he must have taken us 
for two spectres riding upon nightmares. 
Witch-fires ever and anon flitted across the 
road before us, and the night-birds shrieked 
fearsomely in the depth of the woods be- 
yond, where we beheld at intervals glow 
the phosphorescent eyes of wildcats. The 
manes of the horses became more and more 
dishevelled, the sweat streamed over their 
flanks, and their breath came through their 
nostrils hard and fast. But when he found 
them slacking pace, the guide reanimated 
them by uttering a strange, guttural, un- 


CLARIMONDE 


III 


earthly cry, and the gallop recommenced 
with fury. At last the whirlwind race 
ceased ; a huge black mass pierced through 
with many bright points of light suddenly 
rose before us, the hoofs of our horses 
echoed louder upon a strong wooden draw- 
bridge, and we rode under a great vaulted 
archway which darkly yawned between two 
enormous towers. Some great excitement 
evidently reigned in the castle. Servants 
with torches were crossing the courtyard in 
every direction, and above lights were as- 
cending and descending from landing to 
landing. I obtained a confused glimpse of 
vast masses of architecture — columns, ar- 
cades, flights of steps, stairways — a royal 
voluptuousness and elfin magnificence of 
construction worthy of fairyland. A negro 
page — the same who had before brought me 
the tablet from Clarimode, and whom I in- 
stantly recognized — approached to aid me in 
dismounting, and the major-domo, attired 
in black velvet with a gold chain about his 
neck, advanced to meet me, supporting him- 
self upon an ivory cane. Large tears were 
falling from his eyes and streaming over his 


II2 


CLARIMONDE 


cheeks and white beard. “Too late!” he 
cried, sorrowfully shaking his venerable 
head. “Too late, sir priest! But if you 
have not been able to save the soul, come 
at least to watch by the poor body.” 

He took my arm and conducted me to the 
death chamber. I wept not less bitterly 
than he, for I had learned that the dead one 
was none other than that Clarimonde whom 
I had so deeply and so wildly loved. A 
prie-dieu stood at the foot of the bed; a 
bluish flame flickering in a bronze patera 
filled all the room with a wan, deceptive 
light, here and there bringing out in the 
darkness at intervals some projection of fur- 
niture or cornice. In a chiselled urn upon 
the table there was a faded white rose, 
whose leaves — excepting one that still held 
— had all fallen, like odorous tears, to the 
foot of the vase. A broken black mask, a 
fan, and disguises of every variety, which 
were lying on the arm-chairs, bore witness 
that death had entered suddenly and unan- 
nounced into that sumptuous dwelling. 
Without daring to cast my eyes upon the 
bed, I knelt down and commenced to re- 


CLARIMONDE 


II3 

peat the Psalms for the Dead, with exceed- 
ing fervor, thanking God that he had placed 
the tomb between me and the memory of 
this woman, so that I might thereafter 
be able to utter her name in my prayers as 
a name forever sanctified by death. But 
my fervor gradually weakened, and I fell 
insensibly into a reverie. That chamber 
bore no semblance to a chamber of death. 
In lieu of the foetid and cadaverous odors 
which I had been accustomed to breathe 
during such funereal vigils, a languorous 
vapor of Oriental perfume — I know not what 
amorous odor of woman — softly floated 
through the tepid air. That pale light 
seemed rather a twilight gloom contrived 
for voluptuous pleasure, than a substi- 
tute for the yellow-flickering watch-tapers 
which shine by the side of corpses. I 
thought upon the strange destiny which en- 
abled me to meet Clarimonde again at the 
very moment when she was lost to me for- 
ever, and a sigh of regretful anguish escaped 
from my breast. Then it seemed to me 
that some one behind me had also sighed, 
and I turned round to look. It was only an 
8 


CLARIMONDE 


II4 

echo. But in that moment my eyes fell 
upon the bed of death which they had till 
then avoided. The red damask curtains, 
decorated with large flowers worked in em- 
broidery, and looped up with gold bullion, 
permitted me to behold the fair dead, lying 
at full length, with hands joined upon her 
bosom. She was covered with a linen wrap- 
ping of dazzling whiteness, which formed a 
strong contrast with the gloomy purple of 
the hangings, and was of so fine a texture 
that it concealed nothing of her body’s 
charming form, and allowed the eye to fol- 
low those beautiful outlines — undulating like 
the neck of a swan — which even death had 
not robbed of their supple grace. She 
seemed an alabaster statue executed by 
some skilful sculptor to place upon the tomb 
of a queen, or rather, perhaps, like a slum- 
bering maiden over whom the silent snow 
had woven a spotless veil. 

I could no longer maintain my constrained 
attitude of prayer. The air of the alcove 
intoxicated me, that febrile perfume of half- 
faded roses penetrated my very brain, and I 
commenced to pace restlessly up and down 


CLARIMONDE 


II5 

the chamber, pausing at each turn before 
the bier to contemplate the graceful corpse 
lying beneath the transparency of its shroud. 
Wild fancies came thronging to my brain. 
I thought to myself that she might not, per- 
haps, be really dead ; that she might only 
have feigned death for the purpose of bring- 
ing me to her castle, and then declaring her 
love. At one time I even thought I saw 
her foot move under the whiteness of the 
coverings, and slightly disarrange the long, 
straight folds of the winding sheet. 

And then I asked myself : “ Is this indeed 
Clarimonde ? What proof have I that it is 
she ? Might not that black page have 
passed into the service of some other lady ? 
Surely, I must be going mad to torture and 
afflict myself thus!” But my heart an- 
swered with a fierce throbbing: ” It is she; 
it is she indeed!” I approached the bed 
again, and fixed my eyes with redoubled at- 
tention upon the object of my incertitude. 
Ah, must I confess it ? That exquisite per- 
fection of bodily form, although purified and 
made sacred by the shadow of death, affected 
me more voluptuously than it should have 


ii6 


CLARIMONDE 


done, and that repose so closely resembled 
slumber that one might well have mistaken 
it for such. I forgot that I had come there 
to perform a funeral ceremony; I fancied 
myself a young bridegroom entering the 
chamber of the bride, who all modestly hides 
her fair face, and through coyness seeks to 
keep herself wholly veiled. Heartbroken 
with grief, yet wild with hope, shuddering 
at once with fear and pleasure, I bent over 
her and grasped the corner of the sheet. I 
lifted it back, holding my breath all the 
while through fear of waking her. My 
arteries throbbed with such violence that I 
felt them hiss through my temples, and the 
sweat poured from my forehead in streams, 
as though I had lifted a mighty slab of mar- 
ble. There, indeed, lay Clarimonde, even 
as I had seen her at the church on the day 
of my ordination. She was not less charm- 
ing than then. With her, death seemed but 
a last coquetry. The pallor of her cheeks, 
the less brilliant carnation of her lips, her 
long eyelashes lowered and relieving their 
dark fringe against that white skin, lent her 
an unspeakably seductive aspect of melan- 


CLARIMONDE 


II7 

choly chastity and mental suffering; her 
long loose hair, still intertwined with some 
little blue flowers, made a shining pillow for 
her head, and veiled the nudity of her shoul- 
ders with its thick ringlets; her beautiful 
hands, purer, more diaphanous than the 
Host, were crossed on her bosom in an atti- 
tude of pious rest and silent prayer, which 
served to counteract all that might have 
proven otherwise too alluring — even after 
death — in the exquisite roundness and ivory 
polish of her bare arms from which the pearl 
bracelets had not yet been removed. I re- 
mained long in mute contemplation, and the 
more I gazed, the less could I persuade 
myself that life had really abandoned that 
beautiful body forever. I do not know 
whether it was an illusion or a reflection of 
the lamplight, but it seemed to me that the 
blood was again commencing to circulate 
under that lifeless pallor, although she re- 
mained all motionless. I laid my hand 
lightly on her arm; it was cold, but not 
colder than her hand on the day when it 
touched mine at the portals of the church. 
I resumed my position, bending my face 


ii8 


CLARIMONDE 


above her, and bathing her cheeks with the 
warm dew of my tears. Ah, what bitter 
feelings of despair and helplessness, what 
agonies unutterable did I endure in that 
long watch ! Vainly did I wish that I could 
have gathered all my life into one mass that 
I might give it all to her, and breathe into 
her chill remains the flame which devoured 
me. The night advanced, and feeling the 
moment of eternal separation approach, I 
could not deny myself the last sad sweet 
pleasure of imprinting a kiss upon the dead 
lips of her who had been my only love. . . . 
Oh, miracle ! A faint breath mingled itself 
with my breath, and the mouth of Clari- 
monde responded to the passionate pressure 
of mine. Her eyes unclosed, and lighted 
up with something of their former brilliancy; 
she uttered a long sigh, and uncrossing her 
arms, passed them around my neck with a 
look of ineffable delight. Ah, it is thou, 
Romuald!” she murmured in a voice lan- 
guishingly sweet as the last vibrations of a 
harp. ” What ailed thee, dearest ? I waited 
so long for thee that I am dead ; but we are 
now betrothed; I can see thee and visit 


CLARIMONDE 


II9 

thee. Adieu, Romuald, adieu ! I love thee. 
That is all I wished to tell thee, and I give 
thee back the life which thy kiss for a mo- 
ment recalled. We shall soon meet again." 

Her head fell back, but her arms yet en- 
circled me, as though to retain me still. A 
furious whirlwind suddenly burst in the 
window, and entered the chamber. The last 
remaining leaf of the white rose for a mo- 
ment palpitated at the extremity of the stalk 
like a butterfly’s wing, then it detached itself 
and flew forth through the open casement, 
bearing with it the soul of Clarimonde. The 
lamp was extinguished, and I fell insensible 
upon the bosom of the beautiful dead. 

When I came to myself again I was lying 
on the bed in my little room at the presby- 
tery, and the old dog of the former cur6 was 
licking my hand which had been hanging 
down outside of the covers. Barbara, all 
trembling with age and anxiety, was busy- 
ing herself about the room, opening and 
shutting drawers, and emptying powders 
into glasses. On seeing me open my eyes, 
the old woman uttered a cry of joy, the dog 
yelped and wagged his tail, but I was still 


120 


CLARIMONDE 


SO weak that I could not speak a single word 
or make the slightest motion. Afterward 1 
learned that I had lain thus for three days, 
giving no evidence of life beyond the faint- 
est respiration. Those three days do not 
reckon in my life, nor could I ever imagine 
whither my spirit had departed during those 
three days ; I have no recollection of aught 
relating to them. Barbara told me that the 
same coppery-complexioned man who came 
to seek me on the night of my departure 
from the presbytery, had brought mfe back 
the next morning in a close litter, and de- 
parted immediately afterward. When I be- 
came able to collect my scattered thoughts, 
I reviewed within my mind all the circum- 
stances of that fateful night. At first I 
thought I had been the victim of some magi- 
cal illusion, but ere long the recollection of 
other circumstances, real and palpable in 
themselves, came to forbid that supposition. 
I could not believe that I had been dream- 
ing, since Barbara as well as myself had seen 
the strange man with his two black horses, 
and described with exactness every detail of 
his figure and apparel. Nevertheless it ap- 


CLARIMONDE 


I2I 


peared that none knew of any castle in the 
neighborhood answering to the description 
of that in which I had again found Clari- 
monde. 

One morning I found the Abb^ S^rapion 
in my room. Barbara had advised him that 
I was ill, and he had come with all speed to 
see me. Although this haste on his part 
testified to an affectionate interest in me, 
yet his visit did not cause me the pleasure 
which it should have done. The Abb^ S^ra- 
pion had something penetrating and inquisi- 
torial in his gaze which made me feel very 
ill at ease. His presence filled me with em- 
barrassment and a sense of guilt. At the 
first glance he divined my interior trouble, 
and I hated him for his clairvoyance. 

While he inquired after my health in hyp- 
ocritically honeyed accents, he constantly 
kept his two great yellow lion-eyes fixed 
upon me, and plunged his look into my soul 
like a sounding lead. Then he asked me 
how I directed my parish, if I was happy in 
it, how I passed the leisure hours allowed 
me in the intervals of pastoral duty, whether 
I had become acquainted with many of the 


122 


CLARIMONDE 


inhabitants of the place, what was my favor- 
ite reading, and a thousand other such ques- 
tions. I answered these inquiries as briefly 
as possible, and he, without ever waiting 
for my answers, passed rapidly from one 
subject of query to another. That conver- 
sation had evidently no connection with 
what he actually wished to say. At last, 
without any premonition, but as though 
repeating a piece of news which he had 
recalled on the instant, and feared might 
otherwise be forgotten subsequently, he sud- 
denly said, in a clear vibrant voice, which 
rang in my ears like the trumpets of the 
Last Judgment : 

The great courtesan Clarimonde died a 
few days ago, at the close of an orgie which 
lasted eight days and eight nights. It was 
something infernally splendid. The abomi- 
nations of the banquets of Belshazzar and 
Cleopatra were reenacted there. Good God, 
what age are we living in ? The guests were 
served by swarthy slaves who spoke an un- 
known tongue, and who seemed to me to be 
veritable demons. The livery of the very 
least among them would have served for the 


CLARIMONDE 


123 


gala-dress of an emperor. There have always 
been very strange stories told of this Clari- 
monde, and all her lovers came to a violent 
or miserable end. They used to say that 
she was a ghoul, a female vampire; but I 
believe she was none other than Beelzebub 
himself.” 

He ceased to speak and commenced to re- 
gard me more attentively than ever, as 
though to observe the effect of his words on 
me. I could not refrain from starting when 
I heard him utter the name of Clarimonde, 
and this news of her death, in addition to 
the pain it caused me by reason of its coin- 
cidence with the nocturnal scenes I had wit- 
nessed, filled me with an agony and terror 
which my face betrayed, despite my utmost 
endeavors to appear composed. Serapion 
fixed an anxious and severe look upon me, 
and then observed: ” My son, I must warn 
you that you are standing with foot raised 
upon the brink of an abyss ; take heed lest 
you fall therein. Satan’s claws are long, 
and tombs are not always true to their trust. 
The tombstone of Clarimonde should be 
sealed down with a triple seal, for, if report 


124 


CLARIMONDE 


be true, it is not the first time she has died. 
May God watch over you, Romuald ! ” 

And with these words the Abbe walked 
slowly to the door. I did not see him again 

at that time, for he left for S almost 

immediately. 

I became completely restored to health 
and resumed my accustomed duties. The 
memory of Clarimonde and the words of 
the old Abb6 were constantly in my mind ; 
nevertheless no extraordinary event had oc- 
curred to verify the funereal predictions of 
S^rapion, and I had commenced to believe 
that his fears and my own terrors were over- 
exaggerated, when one night I had a strange 
dream. I had hardly fallen asleep when I 
heard my bed-curtains drawn apart, as their 
rings slided back upon the curtain rod with 
a sharp sound. I rose up quickly upon my 
elbow, and beheld the shadow of a woman 
standing erect before me. I recognized 
Clarimonde immediately. She bore in her 
hand a little lamp, shaped like those which 
are placed in tombs, and its light lent her 
fingers a rosy transparency, which extended 
itself by lessening degrees even to the opaque 


CLARIMONDE 


125 


and milky whiteness of her bare arm. Her 
only garment was the linen winding-sheet 
which had shrouded her when lying upon 
the bed of death. She sought to gather its 
folds over her bosom as though ashamed of 
being so scantily clad, but her little hand 
was not equal to the task. She was so white 
that the color of the drapery blended with 
that of her flesh under the pallid rays of the 
lamp. Enveloped with this subtle tissue 
which betrayed all the contour of her body, 
she seemed rather the marble statue of some 
fair antique bather than a woman endowed 
with life. But dead or living, statue or 
woman, shadow or body, her beauty was 
still the same, only that the green light of 
her eyes was less brilliant, and her mouth, 
once so warmly crimson, was only tinted 
with a faint tender rosiness, like that of her 
cheeks. The little blue flowers which I had 
noticed entwined in her hair were withered 
and dry, and had lost nearly all their leaves, 
but this did not prevent her from being 
charming — so charming that notwithstand- 
ing the strange character of the adventure, 
and the unexplainable manner in which she 


126 


CLARIMONDE 


had entered my room, I felt not even for a 
moment the least fear. 

She placed the lamp on the table and 
seated herself at the foot of my bed ; then 
bending toward me, she said, in that voice 
at once silvery clear and yet velvety in its 
sweet softness, such as I never heard from 
any lips save hers : 

“ I have kept thee long in waiting, dear 
Romuald, and it must have seemed to thee 
that I had forgotten thee. But I come from 
afar off, very far off, and from a land whence 
no other has ever yet returned. There is 
neither sun nor moon in that land whence I 
come: all is but space and shadow; there is 
neither road nor pathway: no earth for the 
foot, no air for the wing ; and nevertheless 
behold me here, for Love is stronger than 
Death and must conquer him in the end. 
Oh what sad faces and fearful things I have 
seen on my way hither! What difficulty 
my soul, returned to earth through the 
power of will alone, has had in finding its 
body and reinstating itself therein! What 
terrible efforts I had to make ere I could 
lift the ponderous slab with which they had 


CLARIMONDE 


27 


covered me ! See, the palms of my poor 
hands are all bruised! Kiss them, sweet 
love, that they may be healed!” She laid 
the cold palms of her hands upon my mouth, 
one after the other. 1 kissed them, indeed, 
many times, and she the while watched me 
with a smile of ineffable affection. 

I confess to my shame that I had entirely 
forgotten the advice of the Abb6 Serapion 
and the sacred office wherewith I had been 
invested. I had fallen without resistance, 
and at the first assault. I had not even 
made the least effort to repel the tempter. 
The fresh coolness of Clarimonde’s skin 
penetrated my own, and I felt voluptuous 
tremors pass over my whole body. Poor 
child ! in spite of all I saw afterward, I can 
hardly yet believe she was a demon ; at least 
she had no appearance of being such, and 
never did Satan so skilfully conceal his claws 
and horns. She had drawn her feet up be- 
neath her, and squatted down on the edge 
of the couch in an attitude full of negligent 
coquetry. From time to time she passed 
her little hand through my hair and twisted 
it into curls, as though trying how a new 


128 


CLARIMONDE 


style of wearing it would become my face. 
I abandoned myself to her hands with the 
most guilty pleasure, while she accompanied 
her gentle play with the prettiest prattle. 
The most remarkable fact was that I felt no 
astonishment whatever at so extraordinary 
an adventure, and as in dreams one finds no 
difficulty in accepting the most fantastic 
events as simple facts, so all these circum- 
stances seemed to me perfectly natural in 
themselves. 

I loved thee long ere I saw thee, dear 
Romuald, and sought thee everywhere. 
Thou wast my dream, and I first saw thee 
in the church at the fatal moment. I said 
at once, ‘ It is he ! ’ I gave thee a look into 
which I threw all the love I ever had, all the 
love I now have, all the love I shall ever 
have for thee — a look that would have 
damned a cardinal or brought a king to his 
knees at my feet in view of all his court. 
Thou remainedst unmoved, preferring thy 
God to me ! 

“ Ah, how jealous I am of that God whom 
thou didst love and still lovest more than 
me! 


CLARIMONDE 


129 


“ Woe is me, unhappy one that I am! I 
can never have thy heart all to myself, I 
whom thou didst recall to life with a kiss — 
dead Clarimonde, who for thy sake bursts 
asunder the gates of the tomb, and comes 
to consecrate to thee a life which she has 
resumed only to make thee happy! " 

All her words were accompanied with the 
most impassioned caresses, which bewildered 
my sense and my reason to such an extent, 
that I did not fear to utter a frightful blas- 
phemy for the sake of consoling her, and to 
declare that I loved her as much as God. 

Her eyes rekindled and shone like chryso- 
prases. “In truth ? — in very truth ? — as much 
as God !“ she cried, flinging her beautiful 
arms around me. “ Since it is so, thou wilt 
come with me; thou wilt follow me whither- 
soever I desire. Thou wilt cast away thy 
ugly black habit. Thou shalt be the proud- 
est and most envied of cavaliers; thou shalt 
be my lover ! To be the acknowledged lover 
of Clarimonde, who has refused even a Pope, 
that will be something to feel proud of! 
Ah, the fair, unspeakably happy existence, 
the beautiful golden life we shall live to- 
9 


130 


CLARIMONDE 


gether ! And when shall we depart, my fair 
sir ? ” 

“To-morrow! To-morrow!” I cried in 
my delirium. 

“ To-morrow, then, so let it be! ” she an- 
swered. “ In the meanwhile I shall have 
opportunity to change my toilet, for this is 
a little too light and in nowise suited for a 
voyage. I must also forthwith notify all 
my friends who believe me dead, and mourn 
for me as deeply as they are capable of 
doing. The money, the dresses, the car- 
riages — all will be ready. I shall call for 
thee at this same hour. Adieu, dear heart ! ’ ’ 
And she lightly touched my forehead with 
her lips. The lamp went out, the curtains 
closed again, and all became dark ; a leaden, 
dreamless sleep fell on me and held me un- 
conscious until the morning following. 

I awoke later than usual, and the recollec- 
tion of this singular adventure troubled me 
during the whole day. I finally persuaded 
myself that it was a mere vapor of my 
heated imagination. Nevertheless its sensa- 
tions had been so vivid that it was difficult 
to persuade myself that they were not real. 


CLARIMONDE 


I3I 

and it was not without some presentiment 
of what was going to happen that I got into 
bed at last, after having prayed God to drive 
far from me all thoughts of evil, and to pro- 
tect the chastity of my slumber. 

I soon fell into a deep sleep, and my 
dream was continued. The curtains again 
parted, and I beheld Clarimonde, not as on 
the former occasion, pale in her pale wind- 
ing-sheet, with the violets of death upon 
her clieeks, but gay, sprightly, jaunty, in a 
superb travelling dress of green velvet, 
trimmed with gold lace, and looped up on 
either side to allow a glimpse of satin petti- 
coat. Her blond hair escaped in thick ring- 
lets from beneath a broad black felt hat, 
decorated with white feathers whimsically 
twisted into various shapes. In one hand 
she held a little riding whip terminated by a 
golden whistle. She tapped me lightly with 
it, and exclaimed: “ Well, my fine sleeper, 
is this the way you make your preparations ? 
I thought I would find you up and dressed. 
Arise quickly, we have no time to lose.” 

I leaped out of bed at once. 

“Come, dress yourself, and let us go,” 


132 


CLARIMONDE 


she continued, pointing to a little package 
she had brought with her. “ The horses are 
becoming impatient of delay and champing 
their bits at the door. We ought to have 
been by this time at least ten leagues dis- 
tant from here.’’ 

I dressed myself hurriedly, and she handed 
me the articles of apparel herself one by one, 
bursting into laughter from time to time at 
my awkwardness, as she explained to me the 
use of a garment when I had made a mis- 
take. She hurriedly arranged my hair, and 
this done, held up before me a little pocket 
mirror of Venetian crystal, rimmed with 
silver filigree-work, and playfully asked: 
“ How dost find thyself now ? Wilt engage 
me for thy valet de chambre ? ” 

I was no longer the same person, and I 
could not even recognize myself. I resem- 
bled my former self no more than a finished 
statue resembles a block of stone. My old 
face seemed but a coarse daub of the one 
reflected in the mirror. I was handsome, 
and my vanity was sensibly tickled by the 
metamorphosis. That elegant apparel, that 
richly embroidered vest had made of me a 


CLARIMONDE 


133 


totally different personage, and I marvelled 
at the power of transformation owned by a 
few yards of cloth cut after a certain pat- 
tern. The spirit of my costume penetrated 
my very skin, and within ten minutes more 
I had become something of a coxcomb. 

In order to feel more at ease in my new 
attire, I took several turns up and down the 
room. Clarimonde watched me with an air 
of maternal pleasure, and appeared well sat- 
isfied with her work. “ Come, enough of 
this child’s-play! Let us start, Romuald, 
dear. We have far to go, and we may not 
get there in time." She took my hand and 
led me forth. All the doors opened before 
her at a touch, and we passed by the dog 
without awaking him. 

At the gate we found Margheritone wait- 
ing, the same swarthy groom who had once 
before been my escort. He held the bridles 
of three horses, all black like those which 
bore us to the castle — one for me, one for 
him, one for Clarimonde. Those horses 
must have been Spanish genets born of mares 
fecundated by a zephyr, for they were fleet 
as the wind itself, and the moon, which had 


134 


CLARIMONDE 


just risen at our departure to light us on the 
way, rolled over the sky like a wheel de- 
tached from her own chariot. We beheld 
her on the right leaping from tree to tree, 
and putting herself out of breath in the 
effort to keep up with us. Soon we came 
upon a level plain where, hard by a clump of 
trees, a carriage with four vigorous horses 
awaited us. We entered it, and the postil- 
ions urged their animals into a mad gallop. 
I had one arm around Clarimonde's waist, 
and one of her hands clasped in mine ; her 
head leaned upon my shoulder, and I felt 
her bosom, half bare, lightly pressing against 
my arm. I had never known such intense 
happiness. In that hour I had forgotten 
everything, and I no more remembered hav- 
ing ever been a priest than I remembered 
what I had been doing in my mother’s 
womb, so great was the fascination which 
the evil spirit exerted upon me. From that 
night my nature seemed in some sort to 
have become halved, and there were two 
men within me, neither of whom knew the 
other. At one moment I believed myself a 
priest who dreamed nightly that he was a 


CLARIMONDE 


I3S 


gentleman, at another that I was a gentleman 
who dreamed he was a priest. I could no 
longer distinguish the dream from the real- 
ity, nor could I discover where the reality 
began or where ended the dream. The ex- 
quisite young lord and libertine railed at the 
priest, the priest loathed the dissolute habits 
of the young lord. Two spirals entangled 
and confounded the one with the other, yet 
never touching, would afford a fair repre- 
sentation of this bicephalic life which I lived. 
Despite the strange character of my condi- 
tion, I do not believe that I ever inclined, 
even for a moment, to madness. I always 
retained with extreme vividness all the per- 
ceptions of my two lives. Only there was 
one absurd fact which I could not explain 
to myself — namely, that the consciousness 
of the same individuality existed in two men 
so opposite in character. It was an anomaly 
for which I could not account — whether I 
believed myself to be the cur^ of the little 

village of C , or II Signor Romualdo, the 

titled lover of Clarimonde. 

Be that as it may, I lived, at least I be- 
lieved that I lived, in Venice. I have never 


CLARIMONDE 


136 

been able to discover rightly how much of 
illusion and how much of reality there was 
in this fantastic adventure. We dwelt in a 
great palace on the Canaleio, filled with fres- 
coes and statues, and containing two Titians 
in the noblest style of the great master, 
which were hung in Clarimonde’s chamber. 
It was a palace well worthy of a king. We 
had each our gondola, our barcarolli in fam- 
ily livery, our music hall, and our special 
poe^t. Clarimonde always lived upon a mag- 
nificent scale ; there was something of Cleo- 
patra in her nature. As for me, I had the 
retinue of a prince’s son, and I was regarded 
with as much reverential respect as though 
I had been of the family of one of the twelve 
Apostles or the four Evangelists of the Most 
Serene Republic. I would not have turned 
aside to allow even the Doge to pass, and I 
do not believe that since Satan fell from 
heaven, any creature was ever prouder or 
more insolent than I. I went to the Ridot- 
to, and played with a luck which seemed 
absolutely infernal. I received the best of 
all society — the sons of ruined families, 
women of the theatre, shrewd knaves, para- 


CLARIMONDE 


137 


sites, hectoring swashbucklers. But not- 
withstanding the dissipation of such a life, 
I always remained faithful to Clarimonde. 
I loved her wildly. She would have excited 
satiety itself, and chained inconstancy. To 
have Clarimonde was to have twenty mis- 
tresses ; aye, to possess all women : so mo- 
bile, so varied of aspect, so fresh in new 
charms was she all in herself — a very chame- 
leon of a woman, in sooth. She made you 
commit with her the infidelity you would 
have committed with another, by donning 
to perfection the character, the attraction, 
the style of beauty of the woman who ap- 
peared to please you. She returned my love 
a hundred-fold, and it was in vain that the 
young patricians and even the Ancients of 
the Council of Ten made her the most mag- 
nificent proposals. A Foscari even went so 
far as to offer to espouse her. She rejected 
all his overtures. Of gold she had enough. 
She wished no longer for anything but love 
— a love youthful, pure, evoked by herself, 
and which should be a first and last passion. 
I would have been perfectly happy but for 
a cursed nightmare which recurred every 


38 


CLARIMONDE 


night, and in which I believed myself to be 
a poor village cur^, practising mortification 
and penance for my excesses during the day. 
Reassured by my constant association with 
her, I never thought further of the strange 
manner in which I had become acquainted 
with Clarimonde. But the words of the 
Abb^ Serapion concerning her recurred often 
to my memory, and never ceased to cause 
me uneasiness. 

For some time the health of Clarimonde 
had not been so good as usual; her com- 
plexion grew paler day by day. The phy- 
sicians who were summoned could not com- 
prehend the nature of her malady and knew 
not how to treat it. They all prescribed 
some insignificant remedies, and never called 
a second time. Her paleness, nevertheless, 
visibly increased, and she became colder and 
colder, until she seemed almost as white and 
dead as upon that memorable night in the 
unknown castle. I grieved with anguish 
unspeakable to behold her thus slowly perish- 
ing; and she, touched by my agony, smiled 
upon me sweetly and sadly with the fateful 
smile of those who feel that they must die. 


CLARIMONDE 


139 


One morning I was seated at her bedside, 
and breakfasting from a little table placed 
close at hand, so that I might not be obliged 
to leave her for a single instant. In the act 
of cutting some fruit I accidentally inflicted 
rather a deep gash on my finger. The blood 
immediately gushed forth in a little purple 
jet, and a few drops spurted upon Clari- 
monde. Her eyes flashed, her face sud- 
denly assumed an expression of savage and 
ferocious joy such as I had never before ob- 
served in her. She leaped out of her bed 
with animal agility — the agility, as it were, 
of an ape or a cat — and sprang upon my 
wound, which she commenced to suck with 
an air of unutterable pleasure. She swal- 
lowed the blood in little mouthfuls, slowly 
and carefully, like a connoisseur tasting a 
wine from Xeres or Syracuse. Gradually 
her eyelids half closed, and the pupils of her 
green eyes became oblong instead of round. 
From time to time she paused in order to 
kiss my hand, then she would recommence 
to press her lips to the lips of the wound in 
order to coax forth a few more ruddy drops. 
When she found that the blood would no 


140 


CLARIMONDE 


longer come, she arose with eyes liquid and 
brilliant, rosier than a May dawn ; her face 
full and fresh, her hand warm and moist — 
in fine, more beautiful than ever, and in the 
most perfect health. 

“ I shall not die! I shall not die!” she 
cried, clinging to my neck, half mad with 
joy. ” I can love thee yet for a long time. 
My life is thine, and all that is of me comes 
from thee. A few drops of thy rich and 
noble blood, more precious and more potent 
than all the elixirs of the earth, have given 
me back life.” 

This scene long haunted my memory, and 
inspired me with strange doubts in regard to 
Clarimonde; and the same evening, when 
slumber had transported me to my presby- 
tery, I beheld the Abb^ S^rapion, graver 
and more anxious of aspect than ever. He 
gazed attentively at me, and sorrowfully ex- 
claimed: ” Not content with losing your 
soul, you now desire also to lose your body. 
Wretched young man, into how terrible a 
plight have you fallen ! ” The tone in which 
he uttered these words powerfully affected 
me, but in spite of its vividness even that 


CLARIMONDE 


I4I 

impression was soon dissipated, and a thou- 
sand other cares erased it from my mind. 
At last one evening, while looking into a 
mirror whose traitorous position she had not 
taken into account, I saw Clarimonde in the 
act of emptying a powder into the cup of 
spiced wine which she had long been in the 
habit of preparing after our repasts. I took 
the cup, feigned to carry it to my lips, and 
then placed it on the nearest article of furni- 
ture as though intending to finish it at my 
leisure. Taking advantage of a moment 
when the fair one's back was turned, I threw 
the contents under the table, after which I 
retired to my chamber and went to bed, 
fully resolved not to sleep, but to watch and 
discover what should come of all this mys- 
tery. I did not have to wait long. Clari- 
monde entered in her night-dress, and hav- 
ing removed her apparel, crept into bed and 
lay down beside me. When she felt assured 
that I was asleep, she bared my arm, and 
drawing a gold pin from her hair, com- 
menced to murmur in a low voice: 

One drop, only one drop! One ruby at 
the end of my needle. . . . Since thou 


142 


CLARIMONDE 


lovest me yet, I must not die! . . . Ah, 
poor love! His beautiful blood, so brightly 
purple, I must drink it. Sleep, my only 
treasure! Sleep, my god, my child! I will 
do thee no harm ; I will only take of thy life 
what I must to keep my own from being 
forever extinguished. But that I love thee 
so much, I could well resolve to have other 
lovers whose veins I could drain ; but since 
I have known thee all other men have be- 
come hateful to me. . . . Ah, the beauti- 
ful arm ! How round it is! How white it 
is! How shall I ever dare to prick this 
pretty blue vein!" And while thus mur- 
muring to herself she wept, and I felt her 
tears raining on my arm as she clasped it 
with her hands. At last she took the re- 
solve, slightly punctured me with her pin, 
and commenced to suck up the blood which 
oozed from the place. Although she swal- 
lowed only a few drops, the fear of weaken- 
ing me soon seized her, and she carefully 
tied a little band around my arm, afterward 
rubbing the wound with an unguent which 
immediately cicatrized it. 

Further doubts were impossible. The 


CLARIMONDE 


143 


Abb6 S^rapion was right. Notwithstanding 
this positive knowledge, however, I could 
not cease to love Clarimonde, and I would 
gladly of my own accord have given her all 
the blood she required to sustain her facti- 
tious life. Moreover, I felt but little fear of 
her. The woman seemed to plead with me 
for the vampire, and what I had already 
heard and seen sufficed to reassure me com- 
pletely. In those days I had plenteous 
veins, which would not have been so easily 
exhausted as at present; and I would not 
have thought of bargaining for my blood, 
drop by drop. I would rather have opened 
myself the veins of my arm and said to her: 
“ Drink, and may my love infiltrate itself 
throughout thy body together with my 
blood!” I carefully avoided ever making 
the least reference to the narcotic drink she 
had prepared for me, or to the incident of 
the pin, and we lived in the most perfect 
harmony. 

Yet my priestly scruples commenced to 
torment me more than ever, and I was at a 
loss to imagine what new penance I could 
invent in order to mortify and subdue my 


144 


CLARIMONDE 


flesh. Although these visions were involun- 
tary, and though I did not actually partici- 
pate in anything relating to them, I could 
not dare to touch the body of Christ with 
hands so impure and a mind defiled by such 
debauches whether real or imaginary. In 
the effort to avoid falling under the influ- 
ence of these wearisome hallucinations, I 
strove to prevent myself from being over- 
come by sleep. I held my eyelids open with 
my fingers, and stood for hours together 
leaning upright against the wall, fighting 
sleep with all my might ; but the dust of 
drowsiness invariably gathered upon my 
eyes at last, and finding all resistance use- 
less, I would have to let my arms fall in the 
extremity of despairing weariness, and the 
current of slumber would again bear me 
away to the perfidious shores. S^rapion 
addressed me with the most vehement ex- 
hortations, severely reproaching me for my 
softness and want of fervor. Finally, one 
day when I was more wretched than usual, 
he said to me: “ There is but one way by 
which you can obtain relief from this con- 
tinual torment, and though it is an extreme 


CLARIMONDE 


145 


measure it must be made use of; violent 
diseases require violent remedies. I know 
where Clarimonde is buried. It is necessary 
that we shall disinter her remains, and that 
you shall behold in how pitiable a state the 
object of your love is. Then you will no 
longer be tempted to lose your soul for the 
sake of an unclean corpse devoured by 
worms, and ready to crumble into dust. 
That will assuredly restore you to yourself." 
For my part, I was so tired of this double 
life that I at once consented, desiring to 
ascertain beyond a doubt whether a priest 
or a gentleman had been the victim of delu- 
sion. I had become fully resolved either to 
kill one of the two men within me for the 
benefit of the other, or else to kill both, for 
so terrible an existence could not last long 
and be endured. The Abb6 Serapion pro- 
vided himself with a mattock, a lever, and a 
lantern, and at midnight we wended our way 

to the cemetery of , the location and 

place of which were perfectly familiar to 
him. After having directed the rays of the 
dark lantern upon the inscriptions of several 
tombs, we came at last upon a great slab. 


146 


CLARIMONDE 


half concealed by huge weeds and devoured 
by mosses and parasitic plants, whereupon 
we deciphered the opening lines of the 
epitaph : 

Here lies Clarimonde 

Who was famed in her life-time 

As the fairest of women.* 

“It is here without a doubt," muttered 
Sdrapion, and placing his lantern on the 
ground, he forced the point of the lever 
under the edge of the stone and commenced 
to raise it. The stone yielded, and he pro- 
ceeded to work with the mattock. Darker 
and more silent than the night itself, I stood 
by and watched him do it, while he, bend- 
ing over his dismal toil, streamed with sweat, 
panted, and his hard-coming breath seemed 
to have the harsh tone of a death rattle. It 
was a weird scene, and had any persons from 

* Ici git Clarimonde 
Qui fut de son vivant 
La plus belle du monde. 

The broken beauty of the lines is unavoidably lost 
in the translation. 


CLARIMONDE 


147 


without beheld us, they would assuredly 
have taken us rather for profane wretches 
and shroud-stealers than for priests of God. 
There was something grim and fierce in 
S^rapion’s zeal which lent him the air of a 
demon rather than of an apostle or an angel, 
and his great aquiline face, with all its stern 
features brought out in strong relief by the 
lantern-light, had something fearsome in it 
which enhanced the unpleasant fancy. I 
felt an icy sweat come out upon my fore- 
head in huge beads, and my hair stood up 
with a hideous fear. Within the depths of 
my own heart I felt that the act of the aus- 
tere S^rapion was an abominable sacrilege ; 
and I could have prayed that a triangle of 
fire would issue from the entrails of the dark 
clouds, heavily rolling above us, to reduce 
him to cinders. The owls which had been 
nestling in the cypress-trees, startled by the 
gleam of the lantern, flew against it from 
time to time, striking their dusty wings 
against its panes, and uttering plaintive cries 
of lamentation ; wild foxes yelped in the far 
darkness, and a thousand sinister noises de- 
tached themselves from the silence. At last 


148 


CLARIMONDE 


S6rapion’s mattock struck the coffin itself, 
making its planks reecho with a deep sono- 
rous sound, with that terrible sound noth- 
ingness utters when stricken. He wrenched 
apart and tore up the lid, and I beheld Clari- 
monde, pallid as a figure of marble, with 
hands joined; her white winding-sheet made 
but one fold from her head to her feet. A 
little crimson drop sparkled like a speck of 
dew at one corner of her colorless mouth. 
Serapion, at this spectacle, burst into fury: 
“ Ah, thou art here, demon! Impure cour- 
tesan! Drinker of blood and gold!” And 
he flung holy water upon the corpse and the 
coffin, over which he traced the sign of the 
cross with his sprinkler. Poor Clarimonde 
had no sooner been touched by the blessed 
spray than her beautiful body crumbled into 
dust, and became only a shapeless and 
frightful mass of cinders and half-calcined 
bones. 

” Behold your mistress, my Lord Rom- 
uald! ” cried the inexorable priest, as he 
pointed to these sad remains. ” Will you 
be easily tempted after this to promenade 
on the Lido or at F usina with your beauty ? ’ ’ 


CLARIMONDE 


149 


I covered my face with my hands, a vast 
ruin had taken place within me. I returned 
to my presbytery, and the noble Lord Rom- 
uald, the lover of Clarimonde, separated 
himself from the poor priest with whom he 
had kept such strange company so long. 
But once only, the following night, I saw 
Clarimonde. She said to me, as she had said 
the first time at the portals of the church : 
“Unhappy man! Unhappy man! What 
hast thou done ? Wherefore have hearkened 
to that imbecile priest ? Wert thou not 
happy ? And what harm had I ever done 
thee that thou shouldst violate my poor 
tomb, and lay bare the miseries of my noth- 
ingness ? All communication between our 
souls and our bodies is henceforth forever 
broken. Adieu ! Thou wilt yet regret me ! * ' 
She vanished in air as smoke, and I never 
saw her more. 

Alas ! she spoke truly indeed. I have re- 
gretted her more than once, and I regret her 
still. My soul’s peace has been very dearly 
bought. The love of God was not too much 
to replace such a love as hers. And this, 
brother, is the story of my youth. Never 


CLARIMONDE 


150 

gaze upon a woman, and walk abroad only 
with eyes ever fixed upon the ground ; for 
however chaste and watchful one may be, 
the error of a single moment is enough to 
'make one lose eternity. 



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AMIAw MARCELLA 



A SOUVENIR OF POMPEII 

Three young friends, who had under- 
taken an Italian tour together last year, 
visited the Studii Museum at Naples, where 
the various antique objects exhumed from 
the ashes of Pompeii and Herculaneum have 
been collected. 

They scattered through the halls, inspect- 
ing the mosaics, the bronzes, the frescoes 
detached from the walls of the dead city, 
each following the promptings of his own 
particular taste in such matters; and when- 
ever one of the party encountered something 
especially curious, he summoned his com- 
rades with cries of delight, much to the scan- 
dal of the taciturn English visitors, and the 


154 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


staid bourgeois who studiously thumbed 
their catalogues. 

But the youngest of the three, who had 
paused before a glass case, appeared wholly 
deaf to the exclamations of his comrades, so 
deeply had he become absorbed in contem- 
plation. The object that he seemed to be 
examining with so much interest was a 
black mass of coagulated cinders, bearing a 
hollow imprint. One might easily have mis- 
taken it for the fragment of some statue- 
mould, broken in the casting. The trained 
eye of an artist would have readily therein 
recognized the impression of a perfect bosom 
and a flank as faultless in its outlines as a 
Greek statue. It is well known, indeed the 
commonest traveller's guide will tell you, 
that this lava, in cooling about the body of 
a woman, preserved its charming contours. 
Thanks to the caprice of the eruption that 
destroyed four cities, that noble form, 
though crumbled to dust nearly two thou- 
sand years ago, has come down to us; the 
rounded loveliness of a throat has lived 
through the centuries in which so many em- 
pires perished without even leaving the 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


155 


traces of their existence; chance-imprinted 
upon the volcanic scoriie, that seal of beauty 
remains unobliterated. 

Finding that he still remained absorbed in 
contemplation, Octavian’s friends returned 
to where he stood; and Max, touching his 
shoulder, caused him to start like one sur- 
prised in a secret. Evidently Octavian had 
not been aware of the approach of Max or 
Fabio. 

“ Come, Octavian," exclaimed Max, " do 
not stay lingering whole hours before every 
cabinet, else we shall get late for the train 
and miss seeing Pompeii to-day." 

"What is our comrade looking at?" 
asked Fabio, drawing near. " Ah, the im- 
print found in the house of Arrius Dio- 
medes!" And he turned a peculiar, quick 
glance upon Octavian. 

Octavian slightly blushed, took Max's 
arm, and the visit terminated without fur- 
ther incident. On leaving the Studii Mu- 
seum, the three friends entered a corricolo, 
and were driven to the railway station. The 
corricolo^ with its great red wheels, its tracket 
seat studded with brass nails, and its thin. 


156 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


spirited horse harnessed like a Spanish mule, 
and galloping at full speed over the great 
slabs of lava pavement, is too familiar to 
need description here, especially as we are 
not recording impressions of a trip to Naples, 
but the simple narrative of an adventure 
which, although true, may seem both fan- 
tastic and incredible in the extreme. 

The railroad by which Pompeii is reached 
runs for almost its entire length by the sea, 
whose long volutes of foam advance to un- 
roll themselves upon a beach of blackish 
sand resembling sifted charcoal. This beach 
has actually been formed by lava-streams 
and volcanic cinders, and its deep tone forms 
a strong contrast with the blue of the sky 
and the blue of the waters. The earth alone, 
in that sunny brightness, seems able to re- 
tain a shadow. 

The villages bordered or traversed by the 
railway — Portici, celebrated in one of Au- 
ber’s operas ; Resina, Torre del Graeco, Torre 
dell’ Annunziata, whose dwellings with their 
arcades and terraced roofs attract the travel- 
ler’s gaze — have, notwithstanding the inten- 
sity of the sunlight and the southern love 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


157 


for whitewashing, something of a Plutonian 
and ferruginous character like Birmingham 
or Manchester. The very dust is black 
there. An impalpable soot clings to every- 
thing. One feels that the mighty forge of 
Vesuvius is panting and smoking only a few 
paces off. 

The three friends left the station at Pom- 
peii, laughing among themselves at the odd 
commingling of antique and modern ideas 
suggested by the sign, “ Pompeii Station ” — 
a Graeco-Roman city and a railway depot ! 

They crossed the cotton-field, with its flut- 
tering white bolls, between the railway and 
the disinterred city, and at the inn which 
has been built just without the ancient ram- 
part they took a guide, or, more correctly 
speaking, the guide took them, a calamity 
which is not easily avoided in Italy. 

It was one of those delightful days so com- 
mon in Naples, when the brilliancy of the 
sunlight and the transparency of the air 
cause objects to take such hues as in the 
North would be deemed fabulous, and ap- 
pear indeed to belong to the world of dreams 
rather than to that of realities. The North- 


/1 58 ARRIA MARCELLA 

ern visitor who has once looked upon that 
glow of azure and gold is apt to carry back 
with him into the depths of his native fogs 
an incurable nostalgia. 

Having shaken off a corner of her cinder 
shroud, the resurrected city again rose with 
her thousand details under a dazzling day. 
The cone of Vesuvius, furrowed with striae 
of blue, rosy, and violet-hued lavas, ruddily 
bronzed by the sun, towered sharply defined 
in the background. A thin haze, almost 
imperceptible in the sunlight, hooded the 
blunt crest of the mountain. At first sight 
it might have been taken for one of those 
clouds which shadow the brows of lofty 
peaks on the fairest days. Upon a nearer 
view, slender threads of white vapor could 
be perceived rising from the mountain-sum- 
mit, as from the orifices of a perfuming pan, 
to reunite above in a light cloud. The vol- 
cano, being that day in a good humor, 
smoked his pipe very peacefully; and but 
for the example of Pompeii, buried at his 
feet, no one would ever have suspected him 
of being by nature any more ferocious than 
Montmartre. On the other side fair hills. 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


159 


with outlines voluptuously undulating like 
the hips of a woman, barred the horizon; 
and, further yet, the sea, that in other days 
bore biremes and triremes under the ram- 
parts of the city, extended its azure bound- 
ary. 

Of all spectacles, the sight of Pompeii is 
one of the most surprising. This sudden 
backward leap of nineteen centuries aston- 
ishes even the least comprehensive and most 
prosaic natures. Two paces lead you from 
the antique life to the life of to-day, and 
from Christianity to paganism. Thus, when 
the three friends beheld those streets wherein 
the forms of a vanished past are preserved 
yet intact, they were strangely and pro- 
foundly affected, however well prepared by 
the study of books and drawings they might 
have been. Octavian, above all, seemed 
stricken with stupefaction, and like a man 
walking in his sleep, mechanically followed 
the guide, without hearing the monotonous 
nomenclature that the varlet had learned by 
heart and recited like a lesson. 

He gazed wildly on those ruts hollowed 
out in the cyclopean pavements of the streets 


i6o 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


by the chariot wheels, and which seem to 
be of yesterday, so fresh do they appear; 
those inscriptions in red letters skilfully 
traced upon the surfaces of the walls by 
rapid strokes of the brush (theatrical adver- 
tisements, notices of houses to let, votive 
formulas, signs, announcements of all de- 
scriptions, not less curious than a freshly 
discovered fragment of the walls of Paris, 
with advertising bills and placards attached, 
would prove a thousand years hence for the 
unknown people of the future) ; those houses, 
whose shattered roofs permit one to pene- 
trate at a glance into all those interior mys- 
teries, all those domestic details which his- 
torians invariably neglect, and whereof the 
secrets die with dying civilizations ; those 
fountains that even now seem scarcely dried 
up; that forum whose restoration was inter- 
rupted by the great catastrophe, and whose 
architraves and columns, all ready cut and 
sculptured, still seem waiting in their purity 
of angle to be lifted into place ; those tem- 
ples, consecrated, in that mythologic age 
when atheists were yet unknown, to gods 
that have long ceased to be; those shops 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


l6l 


wherein the merchant only is missing ; that 
public tavern where may still be seen the 
circular stain of the drinking cups upon the 
marble; that barracks with its ochre and 
minium-painted columns, on which the sol- 
diers scratched grotesque caricatures of bat- 
tle, and those juxtaposed double theatres 
of song and drama which might even now 
resume their entertainments, were not the 
companies who performed in them turned 
long since to clay, and at present occupied 
perchance in closing the bunghole of a cask 
or stopping a crevice in the wall, after the 
fashion of Alexander’s ashes or Caesar’s dust, 
according to the melancholy reflections of 
Hamlet ! 

Fabio mounted upon the thymele of the 
tragic theatre while Max and Octavian 
climbed to the upper benches; and there, 
with extravagant gestures, he commenced 
to recite whatever poetical fragments came 
to his memory, much to the terror of the 
lizards, who fled, vibrating their tails, and 
hid themselves in the joints of the ruined 
stonework. Although the brazen or earthen 
vessels formerly used to reverberate sounds 


II 


i 62 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


no longer existed, Fabio’s voice sounded 
none the less full and vibrant. 

The guide then conducted them across the 
open fields which overlie those portions of 
Pompeii still buried, to the amphitheatre 
situated at the other end of the city. They 
passed under those trees whose roots plunge 
down through the roofs of the edifices in- 
terred, displacing tiles, cleaving ceilings 
asunder, and disjointing columns; and they 
traversed the farms where vulgar vegetables 
sprout above wonders of art — material im- 
ages of that oblivion wherewith time covers 
all things. 

The amphitheatre caused them little sur- 
prise. They had seen that of Verona, vaster 
and equally well preserved ; besides, the 
arrangement of such antique arenas was as 
familiar to them as that of those in which 
bull-fights are held in Spain, and which they 
much resemble save in solidity of construc- 
tion and beauty of material. 

Accordingly they soon retraced their foot- 
steps and gained the Street of Fortune by a 
cross-path, listening half-distractedly to the 
cicerone^ who named each house they passed 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


163 

by the name which had been given it imme- 
diately upon its discovery, owing to some 
characteristic peculiarity — the House of the 
Brazen Bull, the House of the Faun, the 
House of the Ship, the Temple of Fortune, 
the House of Meleager, the Tavern of For- 
tune, at the angle of the Consular Road (Via 
Consularia), the Academy of Music, the 
Public Market, the Pharmacy, the Surgeon’s 
Shop, the Custom House, the House of 
the Vestals, the Inn of Albinus, the Ther- 
mopolium, and so on — until they came to 
that gate which leads to the Street of the 
Tombs. 

Within the interior arch of this brick-built 
gate, once adorned with statues which have 
long since disappeared, may be noticed two 
deep grooves designed to receive a sliding 
portcullis, after the style of a mediaeval don- 
jon, to which era, indeed, one might have 
supposed such a defence peculiar. 

** Who,” exclaimed Max to his friends, 
” could have dreamed of finding in Pompeii, 
the Graeco-Latin city, a gate so romantically 
Gothic ? Fancy some belated Roman knight 
blowing his horn before this entrance, sum- 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


164 

moning them to raise the portcullis, like a 
page of the fifteenth century! ” 

There is nothing new under the sun,” 
replied Fabio; “and the aphorism itself is 
not new, inasmuch as it was formulated by 
Solomon.” 

“ Perhaps there may be something new 
under the moon,” observed Octavian, with 
a smile of melancholy irony. 

“ My dear Octavian,” cried Max, who 
during this little conversation had paused 
before an inscription traced in rubric upon 
the outer wall, “ wilt behold the combats 
of the gladiators ? See the advertisement ! 
Combat and chase on the 5th day of the 
nones of April; the masts of the velarium 
will be rigged; twenty pairs of gladiators 
will fight during the nones; if you fear for 
the delicacy of your complexion, be assured 
that the awnings will be spread ; and as you 
might in any case prefer to visit the amphi- 
theatre early, these men will cut each other’s 
throats in the morning — inatutini erunt. 
Nothing could be more considerate.” 

Thus chatting, the three friends followed 
that sepulchre-fringed road which, according 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


165 

to our modern ideas, would be a lugubrious 
avenue for any city, but which had no sad 
significations for the ancients, whose tombs 
contained in lieu of hideous corpses only 
a pinch of dust — abstract idea of death ! 
Art beautified these last resting-places, 
and, as Goethe says, the pagan decorated 
sarcophagi and funeral urns with the images 
of life. 

It was therefore, doubtless, that Fabio 
and Max could visit, with a lively curiosity 
and a joyous sense of being, such as they 
could not have felt in any Christian ceme- 
tery, those funeral monuments, all gayly 
gilded by the sun, which, as they stood by 
the wayside, seemed still trying to cling to 
life, and inspired none of those chill feelings 
of repulsion, none of those fantastic terrors 
evoked by our modern dismal places of sepul- 
ture. They paused before the tomb of 
Mammia, the public priestess, near which a 
tree (either a cypress or a willow) is grow- 
ing; they seated themselves in the hemi- 
cycle of the triclinium, where the funeral 
feasts were held, laughing like fortunate 
heirs; they read with mock solemnity the 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


l66 

epitaphs of Navoleia, Labeon, and the Arria 
family, silently followed by Octavian, who 
seemed more deeply touched than his care- 
less companions by the fate of those dead of 
two thousand years ago. 

Thus they came to the villa of Arrius 
Diomedes, one of the finest residences in 
Pompeii. It is approached by a flight of 
brick steps, and after entering the door-way, 
which is flanked by two small lateral col- 
umns, one finds himself in a court resem- 
bling the patio which occupies the centre of 
Spanish and Moorish dwellings, and which 
the ancients termed impluvium or cavcedium. 
Fourteen columns of brick, overlaid with 
stucco, once supported on four sides a por- 
tico or covered peristyle, not unlike a con- 
vent cloister, and beneath which one could 
walk secure from the rain. This courtyard 
is paved in mosaic with brick and white mar- 
ble, which presents a subdued and pleasing 
effect of color. In its centre a quadrilateral 
marble basin, which still exists, formerly 
caught the rain-water that dripped from the 
roof of the portico. It was a strange ex- 
perience, entering thus into the life of the 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


167 


antique world, and treading with well- 
blacked boots upon the marbles worn smooth 
by the sandals and buskins of the contem- 
poraries of Augustus and Tiberius. 

The cicerone led them through the exedra 
or summer parlor, which opened to the sea, 
to receive its cooling breezes. It was there 
that the family received company, and took 
their siesta during those burning hours when 
prevailed the mighty zephyr of Africa, laden 
with languors and storms. He brought 
them into the basilica, a long open gallery 
which lighted the various apartments, and in 
which clients and visitors erst awaited the 
call of the Nomenclator. Then he con- 
ducted them to the white marble terrace, 
whence extended a broad view of verdant 
gardens and blue sea. Then he showed 
them the NymphcBum, or Hall of Baths, with 
its yellow-painted walls, its stucco columns, 
its mosaic pavement, and its marble bathing- 
basin which had contained so many of the 
lovely bodies that have long since passed 
away like shadows; the cuhiculum^ where 
flitted so many dreams from the Ivory Gate, 
and whose alcoves contrived in the wall 


i68 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


were once closed by a conopeum or curtain, 
of which the bronze rings still lie upon the 
floor ; the tetrastyle^ or Hall of Recreation ; 
the Chapel of the Lares; the Cabinet of 
Archives; the Library; the Museum of 
Paintings; \.\\^ gyntBceum or women’s apart- 
ment, comprising a suite of small chambers, 
now half fallen into ruin, but whose walls 
yet bear traces of paintings and arabesques, 
like fair cheeks from which the rouge has 
been but half wiped off. 

Having fully inspected all these, they de- 
scended to the lower floor, for the ground is 
much lower on the garden side than it is on 
the side of the Street of the Tombs. They 
traversed eight halls painted in antique red, 
whereof one has its walls hollowed with 
architectural niches, after that style of which 
we have to-day a good example in the vesti- 
bule of the Hall of the Ambassadors at the 
Alhambra, and finally they came to a sort 
of cave or cellar, whose purpose was clearly 
indicated by eight earthen amphorae propped 
up against the wall, and once perfumed, 
doubtless, like the odes of Horace with the 
wines of Crete. Falernia, or Massica. 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


169 


One solitary bright ray of sunshine 
streamed through a narrow aperture above, 
half choked by nettles, whose light-traversed 
leaves it transformed into emeralds and to- 
pazes, and this gay natural detail seemed to 
smile opportunely through the sadness of 
the place. 

“ It was here,” observed the cicerone, in 
his customary indifferent tone, ” that among 
seventeen others was found the skeleton of 
the lady whose mould is exhibited at the 
Naples Museum. She wore gold rings, and 
the shreds of her fine tunic still clung to the 
mass of cinders which have preserved her 
shape.” 

The guide’s commonplace phrases deeply 
affected Octavian. He made the man point 
out to him the exact spot where the pre- 
cious remains had been discovered, and had 
it not been for the restraining presence of 
his friends, he would have abandoned him- 
self to some extravagant lyrism. His chest 
heaved, his eyes glistened with a furtive 
moisture. Though blotted out by twenty 
centuries of oblivion, that catastrophe 
touched him like a recent misfortune. Not 


170 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


even the death of a mistress or a friend could 
have affected him more profoundly; and 
while Max and Fabio had their backs turned, 
a tear, two thousand years late, fell upon 
the spot where that woman, with whom he 
felt he had fallen retrospectively in love, had 
perished, suffocated by the hot cinders of 
the volcano. 

Enough of this archaeology,'* cried Fa- 
bio. “ We do not propose to write disserta- 
tions upon an ancient jug or a tile of the age 
of Julius Caesar in order to obtain member- 
ships in some provincial academy. These 
classic souvenirs give me the stomachache. 
Let us go to dinner — if such a thing be pos- 
sible — in that picturesque hostelry, where I 
fear we shall be served with fossil beefsteaks 
and fresh eggs laid prior to the death of 
Pliny." 

" I will not exclaim with Boileau: 

* Un sot, quelquefois, ouvre un avis important,*” 

exclaimed Max, with a laugh. " That 
would be ill-mannered, but your idea is a 
good one. Still, I think it would have been 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


I71 

pleasant to banquet here, on some triclini- 
um, reclining after the antique fashion, and 
waited upon by slaves according to the style 
of Lucullus or Trimalchio. It is true that I 
see no oysters from Lake Lucrinus, the tur- 
bots and mullets from the Adriatic are want- 
ing, the Apuleian boar cannot be had in 
market, and the loaves and honey-cakes on 
exhibition in the Naples Museum lie, hard 
as stones, beside their green-gray moulds. 
Even raw macaroni sprinkled with caccia- 
cavallOy detestable as it may be, is certainly 
better than nothing. What does friend Oc- 
tavian think about it ? ” 

Octavian, who was deeply regretting that 
he had not happened to be in Pompeii on 
the day of the eruption, so that he might 
have saved the lady of the gold rings, and 
thereby merited her love, had not heard a 
syllable of this gastronomic conversation. 
Only the last two words uttered by Max had 
fallen upon his ears, and feeling no desire to 
broach a discussion, he gave a random nod 
of assent, upon which the amicable party re- 
traced the road along the ramparts to the inn. 

The table was placed under a sort of open 


172 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


porch which served as a vestibule to the hos- 
telry, whose rough cast walls were decorated 
with various daubs that the host entitled 
“ Salvator Rosa,'’ “ Espagnolet,” “ Cav- 
alier Massimo,” and other celebrated names 
of the Neapolitan School, which he deemed 
himself bound to extol. 

“ Venerable host,” cried Fabio, ” do not 
waste your eloquence to no purpose. We 
are not Englishmen, and we prefer young 
women to old canvases. Better send us 
your wine-list by that handsome brunette 
with the velvety eyes whom I just now per- 
ceived on the stairway.” 

Finding that his guests did not belong to 
the mystifiable class of Philistines and bour- 
geois y the palforio ceased to vaunt his gal- 
lery in order to glorify his cellar. To begin 
with, he had all the best vintages : Chateau 
Margaux, Grand Lafitte which had been 
twice to the Indies, Sillery de Moet, Hoch- 
meyer, scarlet wine, port and porter, ale 
and ginger beer, white and red Lachryma- 
Christi, Caprian, and Falernian. 

” What, you have Falernian wine, animal ! 
And put it at the end of your list ! And you 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


173 


dare to subject us to an unendurable oeno- 
logical litany!” cried Max, leaping at the 
inn-keeper’s throat with burlesque fury. 
” Why, you have no sentiment of local col- 
or. You are unworthy to live in this an- 
tique neighborhood. Is it even good, this 
Falernian wine of yours ? Was it put in 
amphorae under the Consul Plancus — Con- 
sule Planco f ’ ’ 

” I know nothing about the Consul Plan- 
cus, and my wine is not put in amphorae, 
but it is good, and worth ten carlins a bot- 
tle,” answered the inn-keeper. 

Day had faded away and the night came, 
a serene, transparent night, clearer, as- 
suredly, than full midday in London. The 
earth had tints of azure, and the sky silvery 
reflections of inconceivable sweetness. The 
air was so still that the flames of the candles 
on the table did not oscillate. 

A young boy, playing a flute, approached 
the table, and standing there, with his eyes 
fixed upon the three guests, performed upon 
his sweet and melodious instrument, one of 
those popular airs in a minor key which have 
a penetrating charm. 


174 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


Perhaps that lad was a direct descendant 
of the flute-player who marched before 
Duilius. 

“ Our repast is assuming quite an antique 
aspect. We only need some Gaditanian 
dancing women and ivy garlands,” ex- 
claimed Max, as he helped himself to a 
great bumper of Falernian wine. 

“ I feel myself in the humor for making 
Latin quotations like a feuilleton in the 
D^bats. Stanzas of odes come back to my 
memory,” added Max. 

“Keep them to yourself!” cried Fabio 
and Octavian, justly alarmed. ” Nothing 
is so indigestible as Latin at dinner.” 

Among young men with cigars in their 
mouths and elbows on the table, who find 
themselves contemplating a certain number 
of empty flagons, especially when the wine 
has been capitally good, conversation never 
fails to turn upon women. Each explained 
his own system, whereof the following is a 
fair summary: 

Fabio cared only for youth and beauty. 
Voluptuous and positive, he found no plea- 
sure in illusions, and had no preferences in 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


175 


love. A peasant girl would have pleased 
his fancy as well as a princess, provided she 
were beautiful. The body rather than its 
apparel attracted him. He laughed much 
at certain of his friends who were enamored 
of so many yards of lace and silk, and he 
declared it were more rational to fall in love 
with the stock of a fashionable marchand des 
nouveauUs. These opinions, which were 
rational enough in the main, and which he 
made no attempt to conceal, caused him to 
pass for an eccentric. 

Max, less of an artist than Fabio, cared 
only for difficult undertakings, complicated 
intrigues. He sought resistances to van- 
quish, virtues to seduce, and played at love 
as at a game of chess, with long-premedi- 
tated moves, reserved ambuscades, and 
stratagems worthy of Polybius. In a draw- 
ing-room he would always choose the woman 
who seemed least in sympathy with him for 
the object of attack. To make her pass by 
skilful transition from aversion to love 
afforded him delicious pleasure. To impose 
himself upon characters which strove to 
repel him, and master wills that rebelled 


176 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


against his influence, seemed to him the 
sweetest of all triumphs. Like those hun- 
ters who, through rain, sunshine, or snow, 
through fields and woods, and over plains, 
pursue with excessive fatigue and uncon- 
querable ardor some miserable quarry which 
in three cases out of four they would not 
deign to eat, so Max, having once captured 
his prey, troubled himself no further about 
it, and at once started off on another chase. 

As for Octavian, he confessed that reality 
itself had little charm for him, not because 
he indulged in student-dreams, all moulded 
of lilies and roses like one of Demoustier’s 
madrigals, but because there were too many 
prosaic and repulsive details surrounding all 
beauty, too many doting and decorated 
fathers, coquettish mothers who wore nat- 
ural flowers in false hair, ruddy-faced cousins 
meditating proposals, ridiculous aunts in 
love with little dogs. An acquatinta engrav- 
ing after Horace Vernet or Delaroche, hung 
up in a woman’s room, would have been 
sufficient to check a growing passion within 
him. More poetical even than amorous, he 
wanted a terrace on Isola-Bella, in Lake 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


177 


Maggiore, under the light of a full moon to 
frame a rendezvous. He would have wished 
to elevate his love above the midst of com- 
mon life, and transport its scenes to the 
stars. Thus he had by turns fallen fruit- 
lessly and madly in love with all the grand 
feminine types preserved by history or art. 
Like Faust, he had loved Helen, and would 
have wished that the undulations of the ages 
might bear to him one of those sublime per- 
sonifications of human desires and dreams, 
whose forms, to mortal eyes invisible, live 
immortally beyond Space and Time. He 
had created for himself an ideal seraglio, 
with Semiramis, Aspasia, Cleopatra, Diana 
of Poitiers, Jane of Arragon. At times also 
he had fallen in love with statues, and one 
day, passing before the Venus of Milo in the 
Museum, he cried out passionately: “ Oh, 
who will restore thy arms that thou may’st 
crush me upon thy marble bosom!" At 
Rome, the sight of a matted mass of long 
thick human hair, exhumed from an antique 
tomb, had thrown him into a fantastic de- 
lirium. He had attempted, through the 
medium of a few of those hairs, obtained by 


12 


78 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


a golden bribe from the custodian, and 
placed in the hands of a clairvoyant of great 
power, to evoke the shade and form of the 
dead; but the conducting fluid — the subtle 
odyle — had evaporated during the lapse of 
so many years, and the apparition could no 
more come forth out of the eternal night. 

As Fabio had divined before the glass 
cabinet in the Studii Museum, the imprint 
discovered in the cellar at the villa of Arrius 
Diomedes had excited in Octavian wild im- 
pulses toward a retrospective ideal. He 
longed to soar beyond Life and Time and 
transport himself in spirit to the age of 
Titus. 

Max and Fabio retired to their room, and 
being somewhat heavy-headed from the 
classic fumes of the Falernian, were soon 
sound asleep. Octavian, who had more 
than once suffered the full glass to remain 
before him untasted, not wishing to disturb 
by a grosser intoxication the poetic drunken- 
ness which boiled in his brain, felt from the 
agitation of his nerves that sleep would not 
come to him, and left the hostelry on tiptoe 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


179 


that he might cool his brow and calm his 
thoughts in the night air. 

His feet bore him unawares to the en- 
trance which leads into the dead city. He 
removed the wooden bar that closed it, and 
wandered into the ruins beyond. 

The moon illuminated the pale houses 
with her white beams, dividing the streets 
into double-edged lines of silvery white and 
bluish shadow. This nocturnal day, with 
its subdued tints, disguised the degradation 
of the buildings. The mutilated columns, 
the fagades streaked with fugitive lizards, 
the roofs crumbled in by the eruption, were 
less noticeable than when beheld under the 
clear, raw light of the sun. The lost parts 
were completed by the half-tint of shadow, 
and here and there one brusque beam of 
light, like a touch of sentiment in a picture- 
sketch, marked where a whole edifice had 
crumbled away. The silent genii of the 
night seemed to have repaired the fossil city 
for some representation of fantastic life. 

At times Octavian fancied that he saw 
vague human forms in the shadow, but they 
vanished the moment they approached the 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


I So 

edge of the lighted portion of the street. A 
low whispering, an indefinite hum, floated 
through the silence. Our promenader at 
first attributed them to a fluttering in his 
eyes, to a buzzing in his ears; it might even, 
he thought, be merely an optical delusion, 
coupled with the sighing of the sea-breezes, 
or the flight of some snake or lizard through 
the nettles, for in nature all things live, even 
death ; all things make themselves heard, 
even silence. Nevertheless he felt a kind of 
involuntary terror, a slight trembling, that 
might have been caused by the cold night 
air, but which made his flesh creep. Could 
it be that his comrades, actuated by the 
same impulses as himself, were seeking him 
among the ruins ? Those dimly seen forms 
and those indistinct sounds of footsteps! 
Might it not have been only Max and Fabio 
walking and chatting together, who had just 
disappeared round the corner of a cross- 
road ? But Octavian felt to his dismay that 
this very natural explanation could not be 
true, and the arguments which he made to 
himself in favor of it were the reverse of 
convincing. The solitude and the shadow 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


I8l 


were peopled with invisible beings whom he 
was disturbing. He had fallen into the 
midst of a mystery, and it seemed that they 
were awaiting his departure in order to com- 
mence again. Such were the extravagant 
ideas that floated through his brain, and ob- 
tained no little verisimilitude from the hour, 
the place, and the thousand alarming details 
which those can well understand who have 
ever found themselves alone by night in the 
midst of some vast ruin. 

Passing before a house which he had at- 
tentively observed during the day, and which 
the moon shone fully upon, he beheld in 
perfect integrity a certain portico whereof 
he had vainly attempted to restore the de- 
sign in fancy. Four Ionic columns — fluted 
for half their height and their shafts purple- 
robed with minium tints — sustained a cyma- 
tium adorned with polychromatic ornaments 
that the artist seemed only to have com- 
pleted the day before. Upon one side wall 
of the entrance a Laconian molossus, painted 
in encaustic, and accompanied by the warn- 
ing inscription “ Cave canem^* barked at the 
moon and the visitor with pictured fury. 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


182 

On the mosaic threshold the word HAVE, 
in Oscan and Latin characters, saluted the 
guest with its friendly syllables. The outer 
surfaces of the walls, tinted with ochre and 
rubric, were unmarred by a single crack. 
The house had grown a story higher; and 
the tiled roof, now surmounted by a bronze 
acroterium, projected an intact outline 
against the light blue of the sky, where a 
few stars were growing pale. 

This strange restoration effected between 
afternoon and evening by some unknown 
architect greatly puzzled Octavian, who felt 
certain of having the same day seen that 
very house in a lamentable state of ruin. 
The mysterious reconstructor had labored 
with great despatch, for all the neighboring 
dwellings had the same fresh, new look; all 
the pillars were coiffed with their capitals; 
not a single stone, a brick, a pellicle of 
stucco or a scale of paint was wanting upon 
the shining surfaces of the fa9ades; and 
through the intervals of the peristyles sur- 
rounding the marble basin of the cavaedium 
one could catch glimpses of white laurels 
and bayroses, myrtles and pomegranates. 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


183 


Surely all the historians were mistaken ; the 
eruption had never taken place, or else the 
needle of Time had moved backward twenty 
secular hours upon the dial of Eternity ! 

In the climax of his astonishment, Octa- 
vian commenced to wonder whether he 
might not actually be sleeping upon his feet, 
and walking in a dream. He even seriously 
asked himself whether madness might not 
be parading its hallucinations before his 
eyes; but he soon felt himself compelled 
to admit that he was neither asleep nor 
mad. 

A singular change had taken place in the 
atmosphere. Vague rose-tints were blend- 
ing through brightening shades of violet with 
the faintly azure tints of moonlight ; the sky 
commenced to glow brightly along its bor- 
ders ; daylight seemed about to dawn. Oc- 
tavian took out his watch: it marked the 
hour of midnight. Fearing that it might 
have stopped, he pressed the spring of the 
repeating mechanism. It struck twelve 
times. It was midnight beyond a doubt, 
and yet the brightness ever increased. The 
moon sank through the azure which became 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


184 

momentarily more and more luminous. The 
sun rose ! 

Then Octavian, to whom all ideas of time 
had become hopelessly confused, was able 
to convince himself that he was walking, not 
through a dead Pompeii, the chill corpse of 
a city half-shrouded, but through a living, 
youthful, intact Pompeii over which the tor- 
rents of burning mud from Vesuvius had 
never flowed. 

An inconceivable prodigy had transported 
him, a Frenchman of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, back to the age of Titus, not in spirit 
only, but in reality; or else had called up 
before him from the depths of the past a 
desolated city with its vanished inhabitants, 
for a man clothed in the antique fashion had 
just passed out of a neighboring house. 

This man wore his hair short, and his face 
was closely shaven; he was dressed in a 
brown tunic and a grayish mantle, the ends 
of which were well tucked up so as not to 
impede his movements. He walked at a 
rapid gait, bordering upon a run, and passed 
by Octavian without perceiving him. He 
carried on his arm a basket made of Spanish 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


185 


broom, and proceeded toward the Forum 
Nundinarium. He was evidently a slave, 
some Davus, going to market beyond a 
doubt. 

The noise of wheels became audible, and 
an antique wagon, drawn by white oxen and 
loaded with vegetables, came along the 
street. Beside the team walked a peasant 
— with legs bare and sunburnt, and feet san- 
dal-shod — who was clad in a sort of canvas 
shirt puffed out about the waist ; a conical 
straw hat hanging at his shoulders, and de- 
pending from his neck by the chin-band, left 
his face exposed to view — a type of face un- 
known in these days — a forehead low and 
traversed by salient, knotty lines, hair black 
and curly, eyes tranquil as those of his oxen, 
and a neck like that of the rustic Hercules. 
As he gravely pricked his animals with the 
goad, his statuesque attitudes would have 
thrown Ingres into ecstasy. 

The peasant perceived Octavian and ap- 
peared surprised, but he proceeded on his 
way without being able, doubtless, to find 
any explanation for the appearance of this 
strange-looking personage, and in his rustic 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


1 86 

simplicity willingly leaving the solution of 
the enigma to those wiser than himself. 

Campanian peasants also appeared on the 
scene, driving before them asses laden with 
skins of wine, and ringing their brazen bells. 
Their physiognomies differed from those of 
the modern peasants as a medallion differs 
from a sou. 

Gradually the city became peopled, like 
one of those panoramic pictures at first deso- 
late, but which by a sudden change of light 
become animated with personages previously 
invisible. 

Octavian's feelings had undergone a 
change. Only a short time before, amid the 
deceitful shadows of the night, he had fallen 
a prey to that uneasiness from which the 
bravest are not exempt amid such disquiet- 
ing and fantastic surroundings as reason can- 
not explain. His vague terror had ulti- 
mately yielded to a profound stupefaction. 
The distinctness of his perceptions forbade 
him to doubt the testimony of his senses, 
yet what he beheld seemed altogether con- 
trary to reason. Feeling still but half con- 
vinced, he sought by the authentication of 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


187 


minor actual details to assure himself that 
he was not the victim of hallucination. 
Those figures which passed before his eyes 
could not be phantoms, for the living sun 
shone upon them with unmistakable reality, 
and their shadows, elongated in the morning 
light, fell upon the pavement and the walls. 

Without the faintest understanding of 
what had befallen him, Octavian, ravished 
with delight to find one of his most cherished 
dreams realized, no longer attempted to re- 
sist the fate of his adventure. He aban- 
doned himself to the mystery of these mar- 
vels without any further attempt to explain 
them ; he averred to himself that since he 
had been permitted, by virtue of some mys- 
terious power, to live for a few hours in a 
vanished age, he would not waste tirne in 
efforts to solve an incomprehensible prob- 
lem, and he proceeded fearlessly gazing to 
right and left upon this scene at once so old 
and yet so new to him. But to what epoch 
of Pompeiian life had he been transported ? 
An aedile inscription engraved upon ^ a wall 
showed him by the names of public person- 
ages there recorded, that it was about the 


i88 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


commencement of the reign of Titus, or in 
the year 79 of our own era. A sudden 
thought flashed across Octavian’s mind. 
The woman whose mould he had seen in the 
museum at Naples must be living, inasmuch 
as the eruption of Vesuvius by which she 
had perished took place on the 24th of Au- 
gust in this very year: he might therefore 
discover her, behold her, speak to her ! . . . 
The mad longing which had seized him at 
the sight of that mass of cinders moulded 
upon a divinely perfect form, was perhaps 
about to be fully satisfied, for surely naught 
could be impossible to a love which had had 
the strength to make Time itself recoil, and 
the same hour to pass twice through the 
sand-glass of Eternity! 

While Octavian was abandoning himself 
to these reflections, beautiful young girls 
were passing by on their way to the foun- 
tains, all balancing urns upon their heads 
with their white finger-tips, and patricians 
clad in white togas bordered with purple 
bands were proceeding toward the Forum, 
each followed by an escort of clients. The 
buyers commenced to throng about the 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


189 


booths, which were all designated by sculp- 
tured or pictured signs, and recalled by rea- 
son of their shape and small dimensions the 
moresque booths of Algiers. Over most of 
them a glorious phallus of baked and painted 
clay, together with the inscription, Hie habi~ 
tat FelicitaSy testified to superstitious pre- 
cautions against the evil eye. Octavian also 
noticed an amulet shop, whose shelves were 
stocked with horns, bifurcated branches of 
coral, and little figures of Priapus in gold, 
like those worn in Naples even at this day 
as a safeguard against the jettaturay and he 
thought to himself that a superstition often 
outlives a religion. 

Following the sidewalk which borders each 
street in Pompeii (and deprives the English 
of all claim to this invention), Octavian 'sud- 
denly found himself face to face with a beau- 
tiful young man of about his own age, clad 
in a saffron-colored tunic, and a mantle of 
snowy linen as supple as cashmere. The 
sight of Octavian in his frightful modern 
hat, girthed about with a scanty black frock- 
coat, his legs confined in pantaloons, and his 


190 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


feet cramped in well-polished boots, seemed 
to surprise the young Pompeiian in much 
the same way as one of us would feel aston- 
ished to meet on the Boulevard de Gand 
some Iowa Indian or native of Butocudo, be- 
decked with his feathers, necklace of bear's- 
claws, or whimsical tattooing. Neverthe- 
less, being a well-bred young man, he did 
not burst out laughing in Octavian’s face, 
and pitying the poor barbarian who had lost 
his way, no doubt, in that Graeco-Roman 
city, he said to him in a soft, clear voice: 

“ Advena, salve ! " 

Nothing could be more natural than that 
an inhabitant of Pompeii, in the reign of the 
divine, most powerful, and most august Em- 
peror Titus, should speak Latin, yet Octa- 
vian started at hearing this dead tongue in a 
living mouth. It was then, indeed, that he 
congratulated himself on having been pro- 
ficient in his college studies, and taken the 
honors at the annual examinations. The 
Latin taught him by the University served 
him in good stead on that unique occasion, 
and calling back to mind some souvenirs of 
his college course, he returned the salutation 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


I9I 

of the Pompeiian after the style of De viris 
illustribus and Selected e profanis, in a toler- 
ably intelligible manner, but with a Parisian 
accent which forced the young man to smile 
despite himself. 

“ Perhaps it will be easier for you to con- 
verse in Greek,” said the Pompeiian. ” I 
am also acquainted with that language, for 
I studied at Athens.” 

” I am even less familiar with Greek than 
with Latin,” replied Octavian. ” I am from 
the land of Gaul — from Paris — from Lu- 
tetia.” 

” I know that country. My grandfather 
served under the great Julius Caesar in the 
Gallic wars. But what a strange dress you 
wear! The Gauls whom I saw at Rome 
were not thus attired.” 

Octavian attempted to explain to the 
young Pompeiian that twenty centuries had 
rolled by since the conquest of Gaul by 
Julius Caesar, and that the fashions had 
changed; but he forgot his Latin, and in- 
deed, to tell the truth, he had but little to 
forget. 

My name is Rufus Holconius, and my 


192 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


house is at your service,” said the young 
man, ” unless, indeed, you prefer the free- 
dom of the tavern. It is hard by the pub- 
lic-house of Albinus, near the gate of the 
suburb of Augustus Felix and the Inn of 
Sarinus, son of Publius, just at the second 
turn; but if you wish, I will be your guide 
through this city, in which you do not seem 
to be acquainted. Young barbarian, I like 
you, although you endeavored to impose 
upon my credulity by pretending that the 
Emperor Titus, who now reigns, died two 
thousand years ago, and that the Nazarean 
(whose infamous followers were plastered 
with pitch and burned to illuminate Nero’s 
gardens) rules sole master of the deserted 
heavens whence the great gods have fallen ! 
By Pollux!” he continued as his eyes fell 
upon a rubric inscription at a street-corner, 
” you have just come in good time. The 
Casina of Plautus, which has quite recently 
been put upon the stage, will be played to- 
day. It is a curious and laughable comedy 
which will amuse you, even if you only com- 
prehend the pantomime of it. Come with 
me. It is nearly time for the play already. 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


193 


I will find you a place in the seat set apart 
for guests and strangers." And Rufus Hol- 
conius led the way toward the little comic 
theatre which the three friends had visited 
during the day. 

The Frenchman and the citizen of Pom- 
peii proceeded along the Street of the Foun- 
tains of Abundance and the Street of the 
Theatres, passing by the College, the Tem- 
ple of Isis, and the Studio of the Sculptor, 
and entered the Odeon or Comic Theatre 
by a lateral vomitory. Through the recom- 
mendations of Holconius, Octavian obtained 
a seat near the proscenium in a part of the 
theatre corresponding to our private boxes 
which front upon the stage. All eyes were 
immediately turned upon him with good- 
natured curiosity, and a low whispering arose 
all through the amphitheatre. 

The play had not yet commenced, and 
Octavian profited by the interval to examine 
the building. The semicircular seats, ter- 
minated at either end by a magnificent lion’s 
paw sculptured in Vesuvian lava, receded, 
broadening as they rose, from an empty 
space corresponding to our parterre, but 
13 


194 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


much narrower and paved in mosaic with 
Greek marble. The rows of seats widened 
above one another in regular gradation ac- 
cording to distance, and four stairways, cor- 
responding with the vomitories, and sloping 
from the base to the summit of the amphi- 
theatre, divided it into five cunei or wedge- 
shaped compartments, with the broad end 
uppermost. The spectators, all furnished 
with tickets consisting of little slips of ivory, 
upon which were indicated in numerical or- 
der the row, division, and seat, together 
with the name of the play and its author, 
took their places without confusion. The 
magistrates, nobility, married men, young 
folks, and the soldiers — who attracted atten- 
tion by the gleaming of their bronze helmets 
— all occupied different rows of seats. 

It was an admirable spectacle. Those 
beautiful togas and great white mantles dis- 
played in the first row of seats, contrasting 
with the vari-colored garments of the women 
seated in the circle above, and the gray 
capes of the populace who were assigned to 
the upper benches near the columns which 
supported the roof, and between which were 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


195 


visible glimpses of a sky intensely blue as 
the azure background of the Panathenaea. 

A fine spray aromatized with saffron fell 
from the friezes above in imperceptible mist, 
at once cooling and purifying the air. Oc- 
tavian thought of the fetid emanations which 
vitiate the atmosphere of our modern the- 
atres — theatres so uncomfortable that they 
may justly be considered places of torture 
rather than places of amusement, and he 
found that modern civilization had not, after 
all, made much progress. 

The curtain, sustained by a transverse 
beam, sank into the depths of the orches- 
tra ; the musicians took their seats, and the 
Prologue appeared in grotesque attire, his 
face concealed by a frightful mask which 
fitted the head like a helmet. 

Having saluted the audience and de- 
manded applause, the Prologue commenced 
a merry argumentation. Old plays, he said, 
were like old wine which improves with age ; 
and CasinUy so dear to the old, should not 
be less so to the young: all could take pleas- 
ure in it, some because they were familiar 
with it, others because they were not. 


196 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


Moreover, the play had been carefully re- 
mounted, and should be heard with a cheer- 
ful mind, without thinking about one’s debts 
or one’s creditors, for people were not liable 
to be arrested at the theatre. It was a 
happy day, the weather was fair, and the 
halcyons hovered over the Forum. 

Then he gave an analysis of the comedy 
about to be performed by the actors, with 
that minuteness of detail which shows how 
little the element of surprise entered into 
the theatrical pleasures of the ancient. He 
told how the aged Stalino, being enamored 
of his beautiful slave Casina, desired to 
marry her to his farmer Olympio, a com- 
plaisant spouse whose place he himself would 
fill on the nuptial night ; and how Lyco- 
strata, wife of Stalino, in order to thwart the 
luxury of her vicious husband, sought to 
unite Casina in marriage to the groom Cha- 
linus with the further idea of favoring the 
amours of her son — in fine, how the deceived 
Stalino mistook a young slave in disguise for 
Casina, who, being discovered to be free, 
and of free birth, espouses the young master 
whom she loves and by whom she is beloved. 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


197 


As in a reverie, the young Frenchman 
watched the actors with their bronze- 
mouthed masks, exerting themselves upon 
the stage; the slaves ran hither and thither, 
feigning great haste; the old man wagged 
his head and extended his trembling hand ; 
the matron with high words and scornful 
mien strutted in her importance and quar- 
relled with her husband, to the great delight 
of the audience. All these personages made 
their entrances and exits through three doors 
contrived in the foundation-wall and com- 
municating with the green-room of the 
actors. The house of Stalino occupied one 
corner of the stage, and that of his old friend 
Alcesimus faced it on the opposite side. 
These decorations, although very well 
painted, represented the idea of a place 
rather than the place itself, like most of the 
vague scenery of the classic theatres. 

When the nuptial procession, pompously 
escorting the false Casina, entered upon the 
stage, a mighty burst of laughter, such as 
Homer attributes to the gods, rang through 
all the amphitheatre, and thunders of ap- 
plause evoked the vibrating echoes of the 


198 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


enclosure, but Octavian heard no more and 
saw no more of the play. 

In the circle of seats occupied by the 
women, he had just beheld a creature of 
marvellous beauty. From that moment all 
the other charming faces which had attracted 
his attention became eclipsed as the stars 
before the face of Phoebus — all vanished, all 
disappeared as in a dream ; a mist clouded 
the circles of seats with their swarming mul- 
titudes, and the high-pitched voices of the 
actors seemed lost in infinite distance. 

His heart received a sudden shock as of 
electricity, and it seemed to him that sparks 
flew from his breast when the eyes of that 
woman turned upon him. 

She was dark and pale. Her locks, crisp- 
flowing and black as the tresses of Night, 
streamed backward over her temples after 
the fashion of the Greeks, and in her pallid 
face beamed soft, melancholy eyes, heavy 
with an indefinable expression of voluptuous 
sadness and passionate ennui. Her mouth, 
with its disdainful curves, protested by the 
living warmth of its burning crimson against 
the tranquil pallor of her cheeks, and the 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


I99 


curves of her neck presented those pure and 
beautiful outlines now to be found only in 
statues. Her arms were naked to the shoul- 
der, and from the peaks of her splendid 
bosom, which betrayed its superb curves be- 
neath a mauve-rose tunic, fell two graceful 
folds of drapery that seemed to have been 
sculptured in marble by Phidias or Cleo- 
menes. 

The sight of that bosom, so faultless in 
contour, so pure in its outlines, magnetic- 
ally affected Octavian. It seemed to him 
that those rich curves corresponded perfectly 
to that hollow mould in the museum at 
Naples which had thrown him into so ardent 
a reverie, and from the depths of his heart a 
voice cried out to him that this woman was 
indeed the same who had been suffocated in 
the villa of Arrius Diomedes by the cinders 
of Vesuvius. What prodigy, then, enabled 
him to behold her living, and witnessing the 
performance of the Casina of Plautus ? But 
he forbore to seek an explanation of the 
problem. For that matter, how did he him- 
self happen to be there ? He accepted the 
fact of his presence as in dreams we never 


200 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


question the intervention of persons actually 
long dead, but who seem to act nevertheless 
like living people ; besides, his emotion for- 
bade him to reason. For him the Wheel of 
Time had left its track, and his all-conquer- 
ing love had chosen its place among the ages 
passed away. He found himself face to face 
with his chimera, one of the most unattain- 
able of all, a retrospective chimera. The 
cup of his whole life had in a single instant 
been filled to overflowing. 

While gazing upon that face, at once so 
calm and passionate, so cold and yet so re- 
plete with warmth, so dead, yet so radiant 
with life, he felt that he beheld before him 
his first and last love, his cup of supreme 
intoxication ; he felt all the memories of all 
the women whom he ever believed that he 
had loved, vanish like impalpable shadows, 
and his heart became once more virginally 
pure of all anterior passion. The past was 
dead within him. 

Meanwhile the fair Pompeiian, resting her 
chin upon the palm of her hand, turned 
upon Octavian, though feigning the while 
to be absorbed in the performance, the vel- 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


201 


vet gaze of her nocturnal eyes, and that look 
fell upon him heavy and burning as a jet of 
molten lead. Then she turned to whisper 
some words in the ear of a maid seated at 
her side. 

The performance closed. The crowd 
poured out of the theatre through the vomi- 
tories, and Octavian, disdaining the kindly 
offices of his friend Holconius, rushed to the 
nearest doorway. He had scarcely reached 
the entrance when a hand was lightly laid 
upon his arm, and a feminine voice ex- 
claimed in tones at once low yet so distinct 
that not a syllable escaped him: 

“ I am Tyche Novaleia, entrusted with 
the pleasures of Arria Marcella, daughter of 
Arrius Diomedes. My mistress loves you. 
Follow me.” 

Arria Marcella had just entered her litter, 
borne by four strong Syrian slaves, naked to 
the waist, whose bronze torsos shone under 
the sunlight. The curtain of the litter was 
drawn aside, and a pale hand, starred with 
brilliant rings, waved a friendly signal to 
Octavian, as though in confirmation of the 
attendant’s words. Then the purple folds 


202 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


of the curtain fell again, and the litter was 
borne away to the rhythmical sound of the 
footsteps of the slaves. 

Tyche conducted Octavian along winding 
byways, tripping lightly across the streets 
over the stepping-stones which connected 
the foot-paths, and between which the 
wheels of the chariots rolled, wending her 
way through the labyrinth with that cer- 
tainty which bears witness to thorough 
familiarity with a city. Octavian noticed 
that he was traversing portions of Pompeii 
which had never been excavated, and which 
were in consequence totally unknown to 
him. Among so many other equally strange 
circumstances, this caused him no astonish- 
ment. He had made up his mind to be as- 
tonished at nothing. Amid all this archaic 
phantasmagory, which would have driven an 
antiquarian mad with joy, he no longer saw 
anything save the dark, deep eyes of Arria 
Marcella, and that superb bosom which had 
vanquished even Time, and which Destruc- 
tion itself had sought to preserve. 

They arrived at last before a private gate 
which opened to admit them, and closed 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


203 


again as soon as they had entered, and Oc- 
tavian found himself in a court surrounded 
by Ionic columns of Greek marble, painted 
bright yellow for half their height and 
crowned with capitals relieved with blue and 
red ornaments. A wreath of aristolochia 
suspended its great green heart-shaped leaves 
from the projections of the architecture like 
a natural arabesque, and near a marble basin 
framed in plants one flaming rose towered 
on a single stalk — -a plume-flower in the midst 
of natural flowers. The walls were adorned 
with panelled fresco-work, representing fanci- 
ful architecture or imaginary landscape views. 

Octavian obtained only a hurried glance 
at all these details, for Tyche immediately 
placed him in the hands of the slaves who 
had charge of the bath, and who subjected 
him, notwithstanding his impatience, to all 
the refinements of the antique thermcB. 
After having submitted to the several neces- 
sary degrees of vapor-heat, endured the 
scraper of the strigillarius, and felt cosmetics 
and perfumed oils poured over him in 
streams, he was reclothed with a white 
tunic, and again met Tyche at the opposite 


204 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


door, who took him by the hand and con- 
ducted him into another apartment gor- 
geously decorated. 

Upon the ceiling were painted, with a 
purity of design, brilliancy of color, and free- 
dom of touch which bespoke the hand of a 
great master rather than of the mere ordi- 
nary decorator. Mars, Venus, and Love. A 
frieze composed of deer, hares, and birds, 
disporting themselves amid rich foliage, ran 
around the apartment above a wainscoting 
of cipollino marble; the mosaic pavement, 
a marvellous work from the hand, perhaps, 
of Sosimus of Pergamos, represented ban- 
quet-scenes in relief, with a perfection of art 
which deluded the eye. 

At the further end of the hall, upon a 
biclinium, or double couch, reclined Arria 
Marcella in an attitude which recalled the 
reclining woman of Phidias, upon the pedi- 
ment of the Parthenon, Her pearl-em- 
broidered shoes lay at the foot of the couch, 
and her beautiful bare foot, purer and whiter 
than marble, extended from beneath the 
light covering of byssus which had been 
thrown over her. 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


205 


Two earrings, fashioned in the form of 
balance-scales, and bearing pearls in either 
scale, trembled in the light against her pale 
cheeks. A necklace of golden balls, with 
pear-shaped pendants attached, hung down 
upon her bosom, which the negligent folds 
of a straw-colored peplum, with a Greek 
border in black lines, had left half uncov- 
ered ; a gold and black fillet passed and glit- 
tered here and there through her ebon 
tresses, for she had changed her dress upon 
returning from the theatre, and around her 
arm, like the asp about the arm of Cleo- 
patra, a golden serpent with jewelled eyes 
entwined itself in many folds and sought to 
bite its own tail. 

Close by the double couch had been placed 
a little table, supported upon grifhns’ paws, 
inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and freighted 
with different viands served upon dishes of 
silver and gold, or of earthenware enamelled 
with costly paintings. A Phasian bird, 
cooked in its plumage, was visible, and also 
various fruits which are seldom seen together 
in any one season. 

Everything seemed to indicate that a guest 


2o6 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


was expected. The floor had been strewn 
with fresh flowers, and the amphorae of wine 
were plunged into urns filled with snow. 

Arria Marcella made a sign to Octavian to 
lie down upon the biclinium beside her and 
share her repast. Half-maddened with as- 
tonishment and love, the young man took 
at random a few mouthfuls from the plates 
extended to him by little curly-haired Asiatic 
slaves, who wore short tunics. Arria did 
not eat, but she frequently raised to her lips 
an opal-tinted myrrhine vase filled with a 
wine darkly purple like thickened blood. 
As she drank an imperceptible rosy vapor 
mounted to her cheeks from her heart, the 
heart that had never throbbed for so many 
centuries; nevertheless, her bare arm, which 
Octavian lightly touched in the act of rais- 
ing his cup, was cold as the skin of a serpent 
or the marble of a tomb. 

“ Ah, when you paused in the Studii 
Museum to contemplate the mass of har- 
dened clay which still preserves my form,” 
exclaimed Arria Marcella, turning her long, 
liquid eyes upon Octavian, ” and your 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


207 


thoughts were ardently directed to me, my 
spirit felt it in that world where I float, in- 
visible to vulgar eyes. Faith makes God, 
and love makes woman. One is truly dead 
only when one is no longer loved. Your 
desire has restored life to me. The mighty 
invocation of your heart overcame the dim 
distances that separated us.” 

The idea of amorous invocation which the 
young woman spoke of entered into the 
philosophic beliefs of Octavian, beliefs which 
we ourselves are not far from sharing. 

In effect, nothing dies; all things are eter- 
nal. No power can annihilate that which 
once had being. Every action, every word, 
every thought which has fallen into the uni- 
versal ocean of being, therein creates circles 
which travel, and increase in travelling, even 
to the confines of eternity. To vulgar eyes 
only do natural forms disappear, and the 
spectres which have thence detached them- 
selves people Infinity. Paris, in some un- 
known region of space, continues to carry off 
Helen. The galley of Cleopatra still floats 
down with swelling sails of silk upon the 
azure current of an ideal Cydnus. A few 


2o8 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


passionate and powerful minds have been 
able to recall before them ages apparently 
long passed away, and to restore to life per- 
sonages dead to all the world beside. Faust 
has had for his mistress the daughter of 
Tyndarus, and conducted her to his Gothic 
castle in the depths of the mysterious abysses 
of Hades. Octavian had been able to live a 
day under the reign of Titus, and to make 
himself beloved of Arria Marcella, daughter 
of Arrius Diomedes, she who was at that 
moment lying upon an antique couch beside 
him in a city destroyed for all the rest of 
the world. 

“From my disgust with other women, “ 
replied Octavian, “ from the unconquerable 
reverie which attracted me toward its radi- 
ant shapes as to stars that lure on, I knew 
that I could never love save beyond the con- 
fines of Time and Space. It was you that 
I awaited; and that frail vestige of your 
being, preserved by the curiosity of men, 
has by its secret magnetism placed me in 
communication with your spirit. I know 
not if you be a dream or a reality, a phan- 
tom or a woman ; if, like Ixion, I press but 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


209 


a cloud to my cheated breast ; if I am only 
the victim of some vile spell of sorcery — but 
what I do truly know is that you will be my 
first and my last love." 

" May Eros, son of Aphrodite, hear your 
promise," returned Arria Marcella, drop- 
ping her head upon the shoulder of her 
lover, who lifted her in a passionate em- 
brace. " Oh, press me to your young 
breast ! Envelop me with your warm breath. 
I am cold through having remained so long 
without love." And against his heart Oc- 
tavian felt that beautiful bosom rise and fall, 
whose mould he had that very morning ad- 
mired through the glass of a cabinet in the 
museum. The coolness of that beautiful 
flesh penetrated him through his tunic and 
made him burn. The gold and black fillet 
had become detached from Arria’s head, 
passionately thrown back, and her hair 
streamed like a black river over the purple 
pillow. 

The slaves had removed the table. A 
confused sound of sighs and kisses was alone 
audible. The pet quails, indifferent to this 
amorous scene, plundered the crumbs of the 


14 


210 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


banquet upon the mosaic pavement, utter- 
ing sharp little cries. 

Suddenly the brazen rings of the curtain 
which closed the entrance to the apartment 
slided back upon the curtain-rod, and an 
aged man of stern demeanor and wrapped in 
a great brown mantle appeared upon the 
threshold. His gray beard was divided into 
two points after the manner of the Naza- 
reans. His face seemed furrowed by the 
suffering of ascetic mortifications, and a lit- 
tle cross of black wood was suspended from 
his neck, leaving no doubt as to his faith. 
He belonged to the sect, then new, of the 
Disciples of Christ. 

On perceiving him, Arria Marcella, over- 
whelmed with confusion, hid her face in the 
folds of her mantle, like a bird which puts 
its head under its wing at the approach of 
an enemy from whom it cannot escape, to 
save itself at least from the horror of seeing 
him, while Octavian, rising on his elbow, 
stared fixedly at the provoking being who 
had thus abruptly interrupted his happiness. 

“Arria, Arria!” exclaimed the austere 
personage in a voice of reproach, “ did not 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


2II 


your lifetime suffice for your misconduct, 
and must your infamous amours encroach 
upon centuries to which they do not belong ? 
Can you not leave the living in their sphere ? 
Have not your ashes cooled since the day 
when you perished unrepentant beneath the 
rain of volcanic fire ? So, then, even two 
thousand years have not sufficed to calm your 
passion, and your voracious arms still draw to 
your heartless breast of marble the poor mad- 
men whom your philters have intoxicated ! 

“ Arrius, father, mercy! Do not crush 
me in the name of that morose religion which 
was never mine ! I believed in our ancient 
gods, who loved life and youth and beauty 
and pleasure. Do not hurl me back into 
pale nothingness! Let me enjoy this life 
that love has given back to me! 

Silence, impious woman ! Speak not to 
me of your gods, which are demons. Let 
this man, whom you have fettered with your 
impure seductions, depart hence. Draw 
him no more beyond the circle of that life 
which God measured out for him. Return 
to the Limbo of paganism with your Asiatic, 
Roman, or Greek lovers. Young Christian, 


212 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


forsake that larva, who would seem to you 
more hideous than Empousa or Phorkyas, 
could you but see her as she is! ” 

Pale and frozen with horror, Octavian tried 
to speak, but his voice clung to his throat, 
according to the expression of Virgil. 

Will you obey me, Arria ? imperiously 
cried the tall old man. 

“No, never!" responded Arria, with 
flashing eyes, dilated nostrils, and passion- 
trembling lips, as she suddenly encircled the 
body of Octavian with her beautiful statu- 
esque arms, cold, hard, and rigid as marble. 
Her furious beauty, enhanced by the struggle, 
shone forth at that supreme moment with su- 
pernatural brightness, as though to leave its 
imperishable souvenir with her young lover. 

“ Then, unhappy woman," exclaimed the 
old man, “ I must needs employ extreme 
measures, and render your nothingness pal- 
pable and visible to this fascinated child." 
And in a voice of command he pronounced 
a formula of exorcism that banished from 
Arria’s cheeks the purple tints with which 
the black wine from the myrrhine vase had 
suffused them. 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


213 


At the same moment the distant bell of 
one of those hamlets which border the sea- 
coast, or lie hidden in the mountain hollows, 
rang out the first peal of the angelus. 

A sob of agony burst from the broken 
heart of the young woman at that sound. 
Octavian felt her ehcircling arms untwine, 
the draperies which covered her sank fold 
on fold, as though the contours which sus- 
tained them had suddenly given way, and 
the wretched night-walker beheld on the 
banquet-couch beside him only a handful of 
cinders mingled with a few fragments of cal- 
cined bones, among which gold bracelets and 
jewelry glittered, together with such other 
shapeless remains as were found in excavat- 
ing the villa of Arrius Diomedes. 

He uttered one fearful cry and became 
insensible. 

The old man had disappeared, the sun 
rose, and the hall, so brilliantly decorated 
but a short time before, became only a dis- 
mantled ruin. 


After a heavy slumber, inspired by the 
libations of the previous evening. Max and 


214 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


Fabio started from their sleep, and at once 
called their comrade, whose room adjoined 
their own, with one of those burlesque rally- 
ing cries which are so commonly made use 
of by travellers. Octavian, for the best of 
reasons, returned no answer. Fabio and 
Max, hearing no response, entered their 
friend’s chamber and perceived that the bed 
had not been disturbed. 

He must have fallen asleep in some 
chair,” said Fabio, ” without being able to 
get to bed, for our good Octavian cannot 
bear much liquor; and most likely he is tak- 
ing an early walk to dissipate the fumes of 
the wine in the fresh morning air.” 

” But he did not drink much,” returned 
Max, in a thoughtful manner. ” All this 
seems very strange to me. Let us go and 
find him ! ” 

Accompanied by the cicerone, the two 
friends searched all the streets, squares, 
cross-roads, and alleys of Pompeii, entering 
every curious building where they thought 
Octavian might be occupied in copying a 
painting or taking down an inscription, and 
finally discovered him lying insensible upon 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


215 


the disjointed mosaic pavement of a small 
ruined chamber. They had much difficulty 
in restoring him to consciousness, and on 
reviving, his only explanation of the circum- 
stance was that he had taken a fancy to see 
Pompeii by moonlight, and had been seized 
with a sudden faintness, which would doubt- 
less result in nothing serious. 

The little party returned by rail to Naples, 
as they had come, and the same evening, 
from their private box at the San Carlo, 
Max and Fabio watched through their opera 
glasses a troupe of nymphs dancing in a 
ballet, under the leadership of Amalia Fer- 
raris, the danseuse then in vogue, all wearing 
under their gauzy skirts frightful green 
drawers, which made them look like so many 
frogs stung by a tarantula. Pale, with wo- 
ful eyes, and the general air of one crushed 
by suffering, Octavian seemed to doubt the 
reality of what transpired upon the stage, so 
difficult did he find it to resume the senti- 
ments of real life after the marvellous ad- 
ventures of the night. 

From the time of that visit to Pompeii 
Octavian fell into a dismal melancholy. 


2I6 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


which the good-humored pleasantry of his 
companions rather aggravated than soothed. 
The image of Arria Marcella haunted him 
incessantly, and the sad termination of his 
fantastic good fortune had never destroyed 
its charm. 

Unable to contain his misery, he returned 
secretly to Pompeii, and once again wan- 
dered among the ruins by moonlight as be- 
fore, his heart palpitating with maddening 
hope; but the hallucination never returned. 
He saw only the lizards fleeing over the 
stones, he heard only the screams of the 
startled night-birds. He met his friend Ru- 
fus Holconius no more, Tyche came not to 
lay her supple hand upon his arm, Arria 
Marcella obstinately slumbered in her dust. 

Abandoning all hope, Octavian finally mar- 
ried a charming young English girl, who is 
madly in love with him. He is perfectly 
well behaved to his wife, yet Ellen, with 
that subtle instinct of the heart which noth- 
ing can deceive, feels that her husband is 
enamored of another. But of whom ? That 
is a mystery which the most unflagging 
watchfulness cannot enable her to unravel. 


ARRIA MARCELLA 


217 


Octavian never entertains actresses. In so- 
ciety he addresses to women only the most 
commonplace gallantries. He even returned 
with the greatest coldness the marked ad- 
vances of a certain Russian princess cele- 
brated for her beauty and her coquetry. A 
secret drawer, opened during her husband’s 
absence, afforded no confirmation of infidel- 
ity to Ellen’s suspicions. But how could 
she permit herself to be jealous of Arria 
Marcella, daughter of Arrius Diomedes, the 
freedman of Tiberius ? 


















The Mummy’s Foot 




THE rtliNlMYS TOOT 


I HAD entered, in an idle mood, the shop 
of one of those curiosity venders who are 
called marchands de bric-h-brac in that Paris- 
ian argot which is so perfectly unintelligible 
elsewhere in France. 

You have doubtless glanced occasionally 
through the windows of some of these shops, 
which have become so numerous now that 
it is fashionable to buy antiquated furniture, 
and that every petty stockbroker thinks he 
must have his charnbre au moyen dge. 

There is one thing there which clings alike 
to the shop of the dealer in old iron, the 
ware-room of the tapestry maker, the labo- 
ratory of the chemist, and the studio of the 
painter : in all those gloomy dens where a 
furtive daylight filters in through the win- 
dow-shutters the most manifestly ancient 
thing is dust. The cobwebs are more au- 


222 


THE MUMMY’S FOOT 


thentic than the guimp laces, and the old 
pear-tree furniture on exhibition is actually 
younger than the mahogany which arrived 
but yesterday from America. 

The warehouse of my bric-a-brac dealer 
was a veritable Capharnaum. All ages and 
all nations seemed to have made their ren- 
dezvous there. An Etruscan lamp of red 
clay stood upon a Boule cabinet, with ebony 
panels, brightly striped by lines of inlaid 
brass; a duchess of the court of Louis XV. 
nonchalantly extended her fawn-like feet un- 
der a massive table of the time of Louis 
XIII., with heavy spiral supports of oak, 
and carven designs of chimeras and foliage 
intermingled. 

Upon the denticulated shelves of several 
sideboards glittered immense Japanese dishes 
with red and blue designs relieved by gilded 
hatching, side by side with enamelled works 
by Bernard Palissy, representing serpents, 
frogs, and lizards in relief. 

From disembowelled cabinets escaped cas- 
cades of silver-lustrous Chinese silks and 
waves of tinsel, which an oblique sunbeam 
shot through with luminous beads, while 


THE mummy’s foot 


223 


portraits of every era, in frames more or less 
tarnished, smiled through their yellow var- 
nish. 

The striped breastplate of a damascened 
suit of Milanese armor glittered in one cor- 
ner; loves and nymphs of porcelain, Chinese 
grotesques, vases of cdadon and crackle- 
ware, Saxon and old Sevres cups encumbered 
the shelves and nooks of the apartment. 

The dealer followed me closely through 
the tortuous way contriv^ed between the piles 
of furniture, warding off with his hand the 
hazardous sweep of my coat-skirts, watch- 
ing my elbows with the uneasy attention of 
an antiquarian and a usurer. 

It was a singular face, that of the mer- 
chant; an immense skull, polished like a 
knee, and surrounded by a thin aureole of 
white hair, which brought out the clear sal- 
mon tint of his complexion all the more 
strikingly, lent him a false aspect of patri- 
archal bonhomie y counteracted, however, by 
the scintillation of two little yellow eyes 
which trembled in their orbits like two louis- 
d’or upon quicksilver. The curve of his 
nose presented an aquiline silhouette, which 


224 


THE mummy’s foot 


suggested the Oriental or Jewish type. His 
hands — thin, slender, full of nerves which 
projected like strings upon the finger-board 
of a violin, and armed with claws like those 
on the terminations of bats’ wings — shook 
with senile trembling; but those convul- 
sively agitated hands became firmer than 
steel pincers or lobsters’ claws when they 
lifted any precious article — an onyx cup, a 
Venetian glass, or a dish of Bohemian crys- 
tal. This strange old man had an aspect so 
thoroughly rabbinical and cabalistic that he 
would have been burnt on the mere testi- 
mony of his face three centuries ago. 

“ Will you not buy something from me 
to-day, sir ? Here is a Malay kreese with 
a blade undulating like flame. Look at 
those grooves contrived for the blood to run 
along, those teeth set backward so as to tear 
out the entrails in withdrawing the weapon. 
It is a fine character of ferocious arm, and 
will look well in your collection. This two- 
handed sword is very beautiful. It is the 
work of Josepe de la Hera; and this coliche- 
marde^ with its fenestrated guard — what a 
superb specimen of handicraft! ” 


THE mummy’s foot 


225 


“ No; I have quite enough weapons and 
instruments of carnage. I want a small 
figure, something which will suit me as a 
paper-weight, for I cannot endure those 
trumpery bronzes which the stationers sell, 
and which may be found on everybody’s 
desk.” 

The old gnome foraged among his ancient 
wares, and finally arranged before me some 
antique bronzes, so-called at least ; frag- 
ments of malachite, little Hindoo or Chinese 
idols, a kind of poussah-toys in jade-stone, 
representing the incarnations of Brahma or 
Vishnoo, and wonderfully appropriate to the 
very undivine office of holding papers and 
letters in place. 

I was hesitating between a porcelain 
dragon, all constellated with warts, its 
mouth formidable with bristling tusks and 
ranges of teeth, and an abominable little 
Mexican fetich, representing the god Vitzi- 
liputzili au naturel, when I caught sight of 
a charming foot, which I at first took for a 
fragment of some antique Venus. 

It had those beautiful ruddy and tawny 
tints that lend to Florentine bronze that 


15 


226 


THE MUMMY’S FOOT 


warm living look so much preferable to the 
gray-green aspect of common bronzes, which 
might easily be mistaken for statues in a 
state of putrefaction. Satiny gleams played 
over its rounded forms, doubtless polished 
by the amorous kisses of twenty centuries, 
for it seemed a Corinthian bronze, a work 
of the best era of art, perhaps moulded by 
Lysippus himself. 

“ That foot will be my choice,*' I said to 
the merchant, who regarded me with an 
ironical and saturnine air, and held out the 
object desired that I might examine it more 
fully. 

I was surprised at its lightness. It was 
not a foot of metal, but in sooth a foot of 
flesh, an embalmed foot, a mummy’s foot. 
On examining it still more closely the very 
grain of the skin, and the almost imper- 
ceptible lines impressed upon it by the tex- 
ture of the bandages, became perceptible. 
The toes were slender and delicate, and ter- 
minated by perfectly formed nails, pure and 
transparent as agates. The great toe, 
slightly separated from the rest, afforded a 
happy contrast, in the antique style, to the 


THE mummy’s foot 


227 


position of the other toes, and lent it an 
aerial lightness — the grace of a bird's foot. 
The sole, scarcely streaked by a few almost 
imperceptible cross lines, afforded evidence 
that it had never touched the bare ground, 
and had only come in contact with the finest 
matting of Nile rushes and the softest car- 
pets of panther skin. 

“Ha, ha, you want the foot of the Prin- 
cess Hermonthis! ’’ exclaimed the merchant, 
with a strange giggle, fixing his owlish eyes 
upon me. “ Ha, ha, ha! For a paper- 
weight! An original idea! — artistic idea! 
Old Pharaoh would certainly have been sur- 
prised had some one told him that the foot 
of his adored daughter would be used for a 
paper-weight after he had had a mountain 
of granite hollowed out as a receptacle for 
the triple coffin, painted and gilded, cov- 
ered with hieroglyphics and beautiful paint- 
ings of the Judgment of Souls," continued 
the queer little merchant, half audibly, as 
though talking to himself. ^ 

“ How much will you charge me for this 
mummy fragment ? " 

“ Ah, the highest price I can get, for it is 


228 


THE mummy’s foot 


a superb piece. If I had the match of it 
you could not have it for less than five hun- 
dred francs. The daughter of a Pharaoh ! 
Nothing is more rare.’’ 

“ Assuredly that is not a common article, 
but still, how much do you want ? In the 
first place let me warn you that all my 
wealth consists of just five louis. I can buy 
anything that costs five louis, but nothing 
dearer. You might search my vest pockets 
and most secret drawers without even find- 
ing one poor five-franc piece more.” 

” Five louis for the foot of the Princess 
Hermonthis! That is very little, very little 
indeed. ’Tis an authentic foot,” muttered 
the merchant, shaking his head, and impart- 
ing a peculiar rotary motion to his eyes. 
” Well, take it, and I will give you the ban- 
dages into the bargain,” he added, wrapping 
the foot in an ancient damask rag. ” Very 
fine! Real damask — Indian damask which 
has never been redyed. It is strong, and 
yet it is soft,” he mumbled, stroking the 
frayed tissue with his fingers, through the 
trade-acquired habit which moved him to 
praise even an object of such little value 


THE mummy’s foot 


229 


that he himself deemed it only worth the 
giving away. 

He poured the gold coins into a sort of 
mediaeval alms-purse hanging at his belt, 
repeating: 

“The foot of the Princess Hermonthis 
to be used for a paper-weight ! “ 

Then turning his phosphorescent eyes 
upon me, he exclaimed in a voice strident 
as the crying of a cat which has swallowed a 
fish-bone : 

“ Old Pharaoh will not be well pleased. 
He loved his daughter, the dear man ! “ 

“ You speak as if you were a contempo- 
rary of his. You are old enough, goodness 
knows! but you do not date back to the 
Pyramids of Egypt,” I answered, laugh- 
ingly, from the threshold. 

I went home, delighted with my acquisi- 
tion. 

With the idea of putting it to profitable 
use as soon as possible, I placed the foot of 
the divine Princess Hermonthis upon a heap 
of papers scribbled over with verses, in them- 
selves an undecipherable mosaic work of 
erasures; articles freshly begun ; letters for- 


230 


THE mummy’s foot 


gotten, and posted in the table drawer in- 
stead of the letter-box, an error to which 
absent-minded people are peculiarly liable. 
The effect was charming, bizarre^ and ro- 
mantic. 

Well satisfied with this embellishment, I 
went out with the gravity and pride becom- 
ing one who feels that he has the ineffable 
advantage over all the passers-by whom he 
elbows, of possessing a piece of the Princess 
Hermonthis, daughter of Pharaoh. 

I looked upon all who did not possess, 
like myself, a paper-weight so authentically 
Egyptian as very ridiculous people, and it 
seemed to me that the proper occupation of 
every sensible man should consist in the 
mere fact of having a mummy’s foot upon 
his desk. 

Happily I met some friends, whose pres- 
ence distracted me in my infatuation with 
this new acquisition. I went to dinner with 
them, for I could not very well have dined 
with myself. 

When I came back that evening, with my 
brain slightly confused by a few glasses of 
wine, a vague whiff of Oriental perfume deli- 


THE mummy’s foot 


231 


cately titillated my olfactory nerves. The 
heat of the room had warmed the natron, 
bitumen, and myrrh in which the para- 
schistesy who cut open the bodies of the 
dead, had bathed the corpse of the princess. 
It was a perfume at once sweet and pene- 
trating, a perfume that four thousand years 
had not been able to dissipate. 

The Dream of Egypt was Eternity. Her 
odors have the solidity of granite and en- 
dure as long. 

I soon drank deeply from the black cup 
of sleep. For a few hours all remained 
opaque to me. Oblivion and nothingness 
inundated me with their sombre waves. 

Yet light gradually dawned upon the dark- 
ness of my mind. Dreams commenced to 
touch me softly in their silent flight. 

The eyes of my soul were opened, and I 
beheld my chamber as it actually was. I 
might have believed myself awake but for 
a vague consciousness which assured me 
that I slept, and that something fantastic 
was about to take place. 

The odor of the myrrh had augmented in 
intensity, and I felt a slight headache, which 


232 


THE mummy’s foot 


I very naturally attributed to several glasses 
of champagne that we had drunk to the un- 
known gods and our future fortunes. 

I peered through my room with a feeling 
of expectation which I saw nothing to jus- 
tify. Every article of furniture was in its 
proper place. The lamp, softly shaded by 
its globe of ground crystal, burned upon its 
bracket ; the water-color sketches shone un- 
der their Bohemian glass ; the curtains hung 
down languidly; everything wore an aspect 
of tranquil slumber. 

After a few moments, however, all this 
calm interior appeared to become disturbed. 
The woodwork cracked stealthily, the ash- 
covered log suddenly emitted a jet of blue 
flame, and the disks of the pateras seemed 
like great metallic eyes, watching, like my- 
self, for the things which were about to 
happen. 

My eyes accidentally fell upon the desk 
where I had placed the foot of the Princess 
Hermonthis. 

Instead of remaining quiet, as behooved a 
foot which had been embalmed for four 
thousand years, it commenced to act in a 


THE MUMMY’S FOOT 


233 


nervous manner, contracted itself, and leaped 
over the papers like a startled frog. One 
would have imagined that it had suddenly 
been brought into contact with a galvanic 
battery. I could distinctly hear the dry 
sound made by its little heel, hard as the hoof 
of a gazelle. 

I became rather discontented with my ac- 
quisition, inasmuch as I wished my paper- 
weights to be of a sedentary disposition, and 
thought it very unnatural that feet should 
walk about without legs, and I commenced 
to experience a feeling closely akin to fear. 

Suddenly I saw the folds of my bed-cur- 
tain stir, and heard a bumping sound, like 
that caused by some person hopping on one 
foot across the floor. I must confess I be- 
came alternately hot and cold, that I felt a 
strange wind chill my back, and that my 
suddenly rising hair caused my night-cap to 
execute a leap of several yards. 

The bed-curtains opened and I beheld the 
strangest figure imaginable before me. 

It was a young girl of a very deep coffee- 
brown complexion, like the bayadere Amani, 
and possessing the purest Egyptian type of 


234 


THE MUMMY’S FOOT 


perfect beauty. Her eyes were almond- 
shaped and oblique, with eyebrows so black 
that they seemed blue; her nose was ex- 
quisitely chiselled, almost Greek in its deli- 
cacy of outline ; and she might indeed have 
been taken for a Corinthian statue of bronze 
but for the prominence of her cheek-bones 
and the slightly African fulness of her lips, 
which compelled one to recognize her as be- 
longing beyond all doubt to the hieroglyphic 
race which dwelt upon the banks of the 
Nile. 

Her arms, slender and spindle-shaped like 
those of very young girls, were encircled by 
a peculiar kind of metal bands and bracelets 
of glass beads ; her hair was all twisted into 
little cords, and she wore upon her bosom a 
little idol-figure of green paste, bearing a 
whip with seven lashes, which proved it to 
be an image of Isis ; her brow was adorned 
with a shining plate of gold, and a few traces 
of paint relieved the coppery tint of her 
cheeks. 

As for her costume, it was very odd in- 
deed. 

Fancy a pagne, or skirt, all formed of little 


THE mummy’s foot 


235 


strips of material bedizened with red and 
black hieroglyphics, stiffened with bitumen, 
and apparently belonging to a freshly un- 
bandaged mummy. 

In one of those sudden flights of thought 
so common in dreams I heard the hoarse 
falsetto of the bric-a-brac dealer, repeating 
like a monotonous refrain the phrase he had 
uttered in his shop with so enigmatical an 
intonation : 

“ Old Pharaoh will not be well pleased. 
He loved his daughter, the dear man ! " 

One strange circumstance, which was not 
at all calculated to restore my equanimity, 
was that the apparition had but one foot; 
the other was broken off at the ankle ! 

She approached the table where the foot 
was starting and fidgetting about more than 
ever, and there supported herself upon the 
edge of the desk. I saw her eyes fill with 
pearly gleaming tears. 

Although she had not as yet spoken, I 
fully comprehended the thoughts which agi- 
tated her. She looked at her foot — for it 
was indeed her own — with an exquisitely 
graceful expression of coquettish sadness, 


236 


THE mummy’s foot 


but the foot leaped and ran hither and 
thither, as though impelled on steel springs. 

Twice or thrice she extended her hand to 
seize it, but could not succeed. 

Then commenced between the Princess 
Hermonthis and her foot — which appeared 
to be endowed with a special life of its own 
— a very fantastic dialogue in a most ancient 
Coptic tongue, such as might have been 
spoken thirty centuries ago in the syrinxes 
of the land of Ser. Luckily I understood 
Coptic perfectly well that night. 

The Princess Hermonthis cried, in a voice 
sweet and vibrant as the tones of a crystal 
bell: 

“ Well, my dear little foot, you always 
flee from me, yet I always took good care of 
you. I bathed you with perfumed water in 
a bowl of alabaster; I smoothed your heel 
with pumice-stone mixed with palm oil; 
your nails were cut with golden scissors and 
polished with a hippopotamus tooth ; I was 
careful to select tatbebs for you, painted and 
embroidered and turned up at the toes, 
which were the envy of all the young girls 
in Egypt. You wore on your great toe rings 


THE mummy’s foot 


237 


bearing the device of the sacred Scarabasus, 
and you supported one of the lightest bodies 
that a lazy foot could sustain.” 

The foot replied in a pouting and chagrined 
tone : 

“ You know well that I do not belong to 
myself any longer. I have been bought and 
paid for. The old merchant knew what he 
was about. He bore you a grudge for hav- 
ing refused to espouse him. This is an ill 
turn which he has done you. The Arab 
who violated your royal coffin in the subter- 
ranean pits of the necropolis of Thebes was 
sent thither by him. He desired to prevent 
you from being present at the reunion of 
the shadowy nations in the cities below. 
Have you five pieces of gold for my ran- 
som ?” 

“Alas, no! My jewels, my rings, my 
purses of gold and silver were all stolen 
from me,” answered the Princess Hermon- 
this, with a sob. 

“ Princess,” I then exclaimed, “ I never 
retained anybody’s foot unjustly. Even 
though you have not got the five louis which 
it cost me, I present it to you gladly. I 


238 


THE mummy’s foot 


should feel unutterably wretched to think 
that I were the cause of so amiable a person 
as the Princess Hermonthis being lame.” 

I delivered this discourse in a royally gal- 
lant, troubadour tone which must have aston- 
ished the beautiful Egyptian girl. 

She turned a look of deepest gratitude 
upon me, and her eyes shone with bluish 
gleams of light. 

She took her foot, which surrendered 
itself willingly this time, like a woman about 
to put on her little shoe, and adjusted it to 
her leg with much skill. 

This operation over, she took a few steps 
about the room, as though to assure herself 
that she was really no longer lame. 

” Ah, how pleased my father will be ! He 
who was so unhappy because of my mutila- 
tion, and who from the moment of my birth 
set a whole nation at work to hollow me out 
a tomb so deep that he might preserve me 
intact until that last day, when souls must 
be weighed in the balance of Amenthi ! 
Come with me to my father. He will re- 
ceive you kindly, for you have given me 
back my foot.” 


THE mummy’s foot 


239 


I thought this proposition natural enough. 
I arrayed myself in a dressing-gown of large- 
flowered pattern, which lent me a very 
Pharaonic aspect, hurriedly put on a pair of 
Turkish slippers, and informed the Princess 
Hermonthis that I was ready to follow her. 

Before starting, Hermonthis took from 
her neck the little idol of green paste, and 
laid it on the scattered sheets of paper which 
covered the table. 

“ It is only fair,” she observed, smilingly, 
” that I should replace your paper-weight.” 

She gave me her hand, which felt soft and 
cold, like the skin of a serpent, and we de- 
parted. 

We passed for some time with the velocity 
of an arrow through a fluid and grayish ex- 
panse, in which half-formed silhouettes 
flitted swiftly by us, to right and left. 

For an instant we saw only sky and sea. 

A few moments later obelisks commenced 
to tower in the distance; pylons and vast 
flights of steps guarded by sphinxes became 
clearly outlined against the horizon. 

We had reached our destination. 

The princess conducted me to a mountain 


240 


THE mummy’s foot 


of rose-colored granite, in the face of which 
appeared an opening so narrow and low that 
it would have been difficult to distinguish it 
from the fissures in the rock, had not its 
location been marked by two stelae wrought 
with sculptures. 

Hermonthis kindled a torch and led the 
way before me. 

We traversed corridors hewn through the 
living rock. Their walls, covered with hiero- 
glyphics and paintings of allegorical proces- 
sions, might well have occupied thousands 
of arms for thousands of years in their for- 
mation. These corridors of interminable 
length opened into square chambers, in the 
midst of which pits had been contrived, 
through which we descended by cramp-irons 
or spiral stairways. These pits again con- 
ducted us into other chambers, opening into 
other corridors, likewise decorated with 
painted sparrow-hawks, serpents coiled in 
circles, the symbols of the tau and pedum — 
prodigious works of art which no living eye 
can ever examine — interminable legends of 
granite which only the dead have time to 
read through all eternity. 


THE mummy's foot 


241 


At last we found ourselves in a hall so 
vast, so enormous, so immeasurable, that 
the eye could not reach its limits. Files of 
monstrous columns stretched far out of sight 
on every side, between which twinkled livid 
stars of yellowish flame; points of light 
which revealed further depths incalculable 
in the darkness beyond. 

The Princess Hermonthis still held my 
hand, and graciously saluted the mummies 
of her acquaintance. 

My eyes became accustomed to the dim 
twilight, and objects became discernible. 

I beheld the kings of the subterranean 
races seated upon thrones — grand old men, 
though dry, withered, wrinkled like parch- 
ment, and blackened with naphtha and bitu- 
men — all wcdixmgpshents oi gold, and breast- 
plates and gorgets glittering with precious 
stones, their eyes immovably fixed like the 
eyes of spinxes, and their long beards whit- 
ened by the snow of centuries. Behind 
them stood their peoples, in the stiff and 
constrained posture enjoined by Egyptian 
art, all eternally preserving the attitude pre- 
scribed by the hieratic code. Behind these 


242 


THE mummy’s foot 


nations, the cats, ibixes, and crocodiles con- 
temporary with them — rendered monstrous 
of aspect by their swathing bands — mewed, 
flapped their wings, or extended their jaws 
in a saurian giggle. 

All the Pharaohs were there — Cheops, 
Chephrenes, Psammetichus, Sesostris, Ame- 
notaph — all the dark rulers of the pyramids 
and syrinxes. On yet higher thrones sat 
Chronos and Xixouthros, who was contem- 
porary with the deluge, and Tubal Cain, 
who reigned before it. 

The beard of King Xixouthros had grown 
seven times around the granite table, upon 
which he leaned, lost in deep reverie, and 
buried in dreams. 

Farther back, through a dusty cloud, I 
beheld dimly the seventy-two preadamite 
kings, with their seventy-two peoples, for- 
ever passed away. 

After permitting me to gaze upon this 
bewildering spectacle a few moments, the 
Princess Hermonthis presented me to her 
father Pharaoh, who favored me with a most 
gracious nod. 

“I have found my foot again! I have 


THE mummy’s foot 


243 


found my foot!” cried the princess, clap- 
ping her little hands together with every 
sign of frantic joy. ” It was this gentleman 
who restored it to me.” 

The races of Kemi, the races of Nahasi — 
all the black, bronzed, and copper-colored 
nations repeated in chorus : 

” The Princess Hermonthis has found her 
foot again ! ” 

Even Xixouthros himself was visibly 
affected. 

He raised his heavy eyelids, stroked his 
mustache with his fingers, and turned upon 
me a glance weighty with centuries. 

” By 0ms, the dog of Hell, and Tmei, 
daughter of the Sun and of Truth, this is a 
brave and worthy lad ! ” exclaimed Pharaoh, 
pointing to me with his sceptre, which was 
terminated with a lotus-flower. 

” What recompense do you desire ? ” 

Filled with that daring inspired by 
dreams in which nothing seems impossible, 
I asked him for the hand of the Princess 
Hermonthis. The hand seemed to me a 
very proper antithetic recompense for the 
foot. 


244 


THE mummy’s foot 


Pharaoh opened wide his great eyes of 
glass in astonishment at my witty request. 

“ What country do you come from, and 
what is your age ? ” 

I am a Frenchman, and I am twenty- 
seven years old, venerable Pharaoh. 

“ Twenty-seven years old, and he wishes 
to espouse the Princess Hermonthis who 
is thirty centuries old!” cried out at once 
all the Thrones and all the Circles of Na- 
tions. 

Only Hermonthis herself did not seem to 
think my request unreasonable. 

” If you were even only two thousand 
years old,” replied the ancient king, ” I 
would willingly give you the princess, but 
the disproportion is too great ; and, besides, 
we must give our daughters husbands who 
will last well. You do not know how to 
preserve yourselves any longer. Even those 
who died only fifteen centuries ago are 
already no more than a handful of dust. 
Behold, my flesh is solid as basalt, my bones 
are bars of steel ! 

” 1 will be present on the last day of the 
world with the same body and the sa^ne fea- 


THE mummy’s foot 


245 


tures which I had during my lifetime. My 
daughter Hermonthis will last longer than a 
statue of bronze. 

“ Then the last particles of your dust will 
have been scattered abroad by the winds, 
and even Isis herself, who was able to find 
the atoms of Osiris, would scarce be able to 
recompose your being. 

See how vigorous I yet remain, and how 
mighty is my grasp,'' he added, shaking my 
hand in the English fashion with a strength 
that buried my rings in the flesh of my 
fingers. 

He squeezed me so hard that I awoke, 
and found my friend Alfred shaking me by 
the arm to make me get up. 

“ Oh, you everlasting sleeper! Must I 
have you carried out into the middle of the 
street, and fireworks exploded in your ears ? 
It is afternoon. Don't you recollect your 
promise to take me with you to see M. 
Aguado's Spanish pictures ?" 

“God! I forgot all, all about it,'' I an- 
swered, dressing myself hurriedly. “We 
will go there at once. I have the permit 
lying there on my desk.'' 


246 


THE MUMMY’S FOOT 


I started to find it, but fancy my astonish- 
ment when I beheld, instead of the mummy's 
foot I had purchased the evening before, the 
little green paste idol left in its place by the 
Princess Hermonthis! 



Omphale : A Rococo Story 






pMPHALE: 
4 ROCOCO 
STORY 


My uncle, the Chevalier de , resided 

in a small mansion which looked out upon 
the dismal Rue de Tournelles on one side, 
and the equally dismal Boulevard St. An- 
toine upon the other. Between the Boule- 
vard and the house itself a few ancient elm- 
trees, eaten alive by mosses and insects, 
piteously extended their skeleton arms from 
the depth of a species of sink surrounded by 
high black walls. Some emaciated flowers 
hung their heads languidly, like young girls 
in consumption, waiting for a ray of sun- 
shine to dry their half-rotten leaves. Weeds 
had invaded the walks, which were almost 
undistinguishable, owing to the length of 
time that had elapsed since they were last 


250 


OMPHALE : A ROCOCO STORY 


raked. One or two goldfish floated rather 
than swam in a basin covered with duck- 
weed and half-choked by water plants. 

My uncle called that his garden ! 

Besides all the fine things above described 
in my uncle’s garden, there was also a rather 
unpleasant pavilion, which he had entitled 
the DSliceSy doubtless by antiphrasis. It 
was in a state of extreme dilapidation. The 
walls were bulging outwardly. Great masses 
of detached plaster still lay among the net- 
tles and wild oats where they had fallen. 
The lower portions of the wall surfaces were 
green with putrid mould. The woodwork 
of the window-shutters and doors had been 
badly sprung, and they closed only partially 
or not at all. A species of decoration, 
strongly suggestive of an immense kitchen- 
pot with various effluvia radiating from it, 
ornamented the main entrance, for in the 
time of Louis XV., when it was the custom 
to build DHices^ there were always two en- 
trances to such pleasure houses for precau- 
tion’s sake. The cornice, overburdened 
with ovulos, foliated arabesques, and volutes, 
had been badly dismantled by the infiltra- 


OMPHALE : A ROCOCO STORY 


251 


tion of rain-water. In short, the DHices of 

my uncle, the Chevalier de , presented 

a rather lamentable aspect. 

This poor ruin, dating only from yester- 
day, although wearing the dilapidated look 
of a thousand years' decay — a ruin of plas- 
ter, not of stone, all cracked and warped, 
covered with a leprosy of lichen growth, 
moss-eaten and mouldy — seemed to resem- 
ble one of those precociously old men worn 
out by filthy debauches. It inspired no feel- 
ing of respect, for there is nothing in the 
world so ugly and so wretched as either an 
old gauze robe or an old plaster wall, two 
things which ought not to endure, yet which 
do. 

It was in this pavilion that my uncle had 
lodged me. 

The interior was not less rococo than the 
exterior, although remaining in a somewhat 
better state of preservation. The bed was 
hung with yellow lampas, spotted over with 
large white flowers. An ornamental shell- 
work clock ticked away upon a pedestal in- 
laid with ivory and mother-of-pearl. A 
wreath of ornamental roses coquettishly 


252 


OMPHALE : A ROCOCO STORY 


twined around a Venetian glass. Above the 
door the Four Seasons were painted in 
cameo. A fair lady with thickly powdered 
hair, a sky-blue corset, and an array of rib- 
bons of the same hue, who had a bow in her 
right hand, a partridge in her left, a crescent 
upon her forehead, and a leverette at her feet, 
strutted and smiled with ineffable gracious- 
ness from within a large oval frame. This 
was one of my uncle’s mistresses of old, 
whom he had had painted as Diana. It 
will scarcely be necessary to observe that 
the furniture itself was not of the most mod- 
ern style. There was, in fact, nothing to 
prevent one from fancying himself living at 
the time of the Regency, and the mytholog- 
ical tapestry with which the walls were hung 
rendered the illusion complete. 

The tapestry represented Hercules spin- 
ning at the feet of Omphale. The design 
was tormented after the fashion of Vanloo, 
and in the most Pompadour style possible 
to imagine. Hercules had a spindle deco- 
rated with rose-colored favors. He elevated 
his little finger with a peculiar and special 
grace, like a marquis in the act of taking a 


OMPHALE : A ROCOCO STORY 


253 


pinch of snuff, while turning a white flake 
of flax between his thumb and index finger. 
His muscular neck was burdened with bows 
of ribbons, rosettes, strings of pearls, and a 
thousand other feminine gew-gaws, and a 
gorge-de-pigeon colored petticoat, with 
two very large panniers, lent quite a gallant 
air to the monster-conquering hero. 

Omphale’s white shoulders were half cov- 
ered by the skin of the Nemean lion. Her 
slender hand leaned upon her lover’s knotty 
club. Her lovely blonde hair, powdered to 
ash-color, fell loosely over her neck — a neck 
as supple and undulating in its outlines as 
the neck of a dove. Her little feet, true 
realizations of the typical Andalusian or 
Chinese foot, and which would have been 
lost in Cinderella’s glass slippers, were shod 
with half-antique buskins of a tender lilac 
color, sprinkled with pearls. In truth, she 
was a charming creature. Her head was 
thrown back with an adorable little mock 
swagger, her dimpled mouth wore a delicious 
little pout, her nostrils were slightly expanded, 
her cheeks had a delicate glow — an assassin * 
* Beauty-spot. 


254 


OMPHALE : A ROCOCO STORY 


cunningly placed there relieved their beauty 
in a wonderful way ; she only needed a little 
mustache to make her a first-class mousque- 
taire. 

There were many other personages also 
represented in the tapestry — the kindly 
female attendant, the indispensable little 
Cupid — but they did not leave a sufficiently 
distinct outline in my memory to enable me 
to describe them. 

In those days I was quite young — not that 
I wish to be understood as saying that I am 
now very old ; but I was fresh from college, 
and was to remain in my uncle's care until 
I could choose a profession. If the good 
man had been able to foresee that I should 
embrace that of a fantastic story-writer, he 
would certainly have turned me out of doors 
forthwith and irrevocably disinherited me, 
for he always entertained the most aristo- 
cratic contempt for literature in general and 
authors in particular. Like the fine gentle- 
man that he was, it would have pleased him 
to have had all those petty scribblers who 
busy themselves in disfiguring paper, and 
speaking irreverentially about people of qual- 


OMPHALE : A ROCOCO STORY 


255 


ity, hung or beaten to death by his attend- 
ants. Lord have mercy on my poor uncle ! 
He really esteemed nothing in the world 
except the epistle to Zetulba. 

Well, then, I had only just left college. 
I was full of dreams and illusions. I was as 
naive as a rosicre of Salency, perhaps more 
so. Delighted at having no more pensums 
to make, everything seemed to me for the 
best in the best of all possible worlds. I be- 
lieved in an infinity of things. I believed 
in M. de Florian’s shepherdess with her 
combed and powdered sheep. I never for a 
moment doubted the reality of Madame 
Deshouli^re’s flock. I believed that there 
were actually nine muses, as stated in Father 
Jouvency’s Appendix de Diis et Hero'ibus. 
My recollections of Berquin and of Gessner 
had created a little world for me in which 
everything was rose-colored, sky-blue, and 
apple-green. Oh, holy innocence ! — sancta 
simplicitas / as Mephistopheles says. 

When I found myself alone in this fine 
room — my own room, all to myself !-H felt 
superlatively overjoyed. I made a careful 
inventory of everything, even the smallest 


2s6 


OMPHALE : A ROCOCO STORY 


article of furniture. I rummaged every cor- 
ner, and explored the chamber in the fullest 
sense of the word. I was in the fourth 
heaven, as happy as a king, or rather as two 
kings. After supper (for we used to sup at 
my uncle’s — a charming custom, now obso- 
lete, together with many other equally 
charming customs which I mourn for with 
all the heart I have left), I took my candle 
and retired forthwith, so impatient did I 
feel to enjoy my new dwelling-place. 

While I was undressing I fancied that 
Omphale’s eyes had moved. I looked more 
attentively in that direction, not without a 
slight sensation of fear, for the room was 
very large, and the feeble luminous penum- 
bra which floated about the candle only 
served to render the darkness still more vis- 
ible. I thought I saw her turning her head 
toward me. I became frightened in earnest, 
and blew out the light. I turned my face 
to the wall, pulled the bed-clothes over my 
head, drew my night-cap down to my chin, 
and finally went to sleep. 

I did not dare to look at the accursed 
tapestry again for several days. 


OMPHALE : A ROCOCO STORY 


257 


It may be well here, for the sake of im- 
parting something of verisimilitude to the 
very unlikely story I am about to relate, to 
inform my fair readers that in those days I 
was really a very pretty boy. I had the 
handsomest eyes in the world, at least they 
used to tell me so ; a much fairer complexion 
than I have now, a true carnation tint; 
curly brown hair, which I still have, and sev- 
enteen years, which I have no longer. I 
needed only a pretty stepmother to be a 
very tolerable cherub. Unfortunately mine 
was fifty-seven years of age, and had only 
three teeth, which was too much of one 
thing and too little of the other. 

One evening, however, I finally plucked 
up courage enough to take a peep at the fair 
mistress of Hercules. She was looking at 
me with the saddest and most languishing 
expression possible. This time I pulled my 
nightcap down to my very shoulders, and 
buried my head in the coverlets. 

I had a strange dream that night, if in- 
deed it was a dream. 

I heard the rings of my bed-curtains slid- 
ing with a sharp squeak upon their curtain- 
17 


258 


OMPHALE : A ROCOCO STORY 


rods, as if the curtains had been suddenly 
pulled back. I awoke, at least in my dream 
it seemed to me that I awoke. I saw no one. 

The moon shone full upon the window- 
panes, and projected her wan bluish light 
into the room. Vast shadows, fantastic 
forms, were defined upon the floor and the 
walls. The clock chimed a quarter, and the 
vibration of the sound took a long time to 
die away. It seemed like a sigh. The 
plainly audible strokes of the pendulum 
seemed like the pulsations of a young heart, 
throbbing with passion. 

I felt anything but comfortable, and a 
very bewilderment of fear took possession 
of me. 

A furious gust of wind banged the shut- 
ters and made the window-sashes tremble. 
The woodwork cracked, the tapestry un- 
dulated. I ventured to glance in the direc- 
tion of Omphale, with a vague suspicion that 
she was instrumental in all this unpleasant- 
ness, for some secret purpose of her own. 
I was not mistaken. 

The tapestry became violently agitated. 
Omphale detached herself from the wall and 


OMPHALE : A ROCOCO STORY 259 

leaped lightly to the carpet. She came 
straight toward my bed, after having first 
turned herself carefully in my direction. I 
fancy it will hardly be necessary to describe 
my stupefaction. The most intrepid old 
soldier would not have felt very comfortable 
under similar circumstances, and I was 
neither old nor a soldier. I awaited the end 
of the adventure in terrified silence. 

A flute-toned, pearly little voice sounded 
softly in my ears, with that pretty lisp 
affected during the Regency by marchion- 
esses and people of high degree : 

“ Do I really frighten you, my child ? It 
is true that you are only a child, but it is 
not nice to be afraid of ladies, especially 
when they are young ladies and only wish 
you well. It is uncivil and unworthy of a 
French gentleman. You must be cured of 
such silly fears. Come, little savage, leave 
off these foolish airs, and cease hiding your 
head under the bedclothes. Your education 
is by no means complete yet, my pretty 
page, and you have not learned so very 
much. In my time cherubs were more cour- 
ageous." 


26 o 


OMPHALE : A ROCOCO STORY 


But, lady, it is because " 

“ Because it seems strange to you to find 
me here instead of there,” she said, biting 
her ruddy lip with her white teeth, and 
pointing toward the wall with her long taper 
finger. ” Well, in fact, the thing does not 
look very natural, but were I to explain it 
all to you, you would be none the wiser. 
Let it be sufficient for you to know that you 
are not in any danger.” 

” I am afraid you may be the — the ” 

“The devil — out with the word! — is it 
not ? That is what you wanted to say. 
Well, at least you will grant that I am not 
black enough for a devil, and that if hell 
were peopled with devils shaped as I am, 
one might have quite as pleasant a time 
there as in Paradise.” 

And to prove that she was not flattering 
herself, Omphale threw back her lion’s skin 
and allowed me to behold her exquisitely 
moulded shoulders and bosom, dazzling in 
their white beauty. 

“ Well, what do you think of me ?” she 
exclaimed, with a pretty little air of satisfied 
coquetry. 


OMPHALE : A ROCOCO STORY 26 1 

I think that even were you the devil 
himself I should not feel afraid of you any 
more, Madame Omphale/’ 

“ Ah, now you talk sensibly, but do not 
call me madame, or Omphale. I do not wish 
you to look upon me as a madame, and I am 
no more Omphale than I am the devil.” 

” Then who are you ? ” 

” I am the Marchioness de T . A 

short time after I was married the marquis 
had this tapestry made for* my apartments, 
and had me represented on it in the charac- 
ter of Omphale. He himself figures there 
as Hercules. That was a queer notion he 
took, for God knows there never was any- 
body in the world who bore less resemblance 
to Hercules than the poor marquis! It has 
been a long time since this chamber was 
occupied. I naturally love company, and I 
almost died of ennui in consequence. It 
gave me the headache. To be only with 
one’s husband is the same thing as being 
alone. When you came I was overjoyed. 
This dead room became reanimated. I had 
found some one to feel interested in. I 
watched you come in and go out, I heard 


262 


OMPHALE : A ROCOCO STORY 


you murmuring in your sleep, I watched you 
reading, and my eyes followed the pages. 
I found you were nicely behaved, and had a 
fresh, innocent way about you that pleased 
me. In short, I fell in love with you. I 
tried to make you understand. I sighed. 
You thought it was only the sighing of the 
wind. I made signs to you. I looked at 
you with languishing eyes, and only suc- 
ceeded in frightening you terribly. So at 
last in despair T resolved upon this rather 
improper course which I have taken, to tell 
you frankly what you could not take a hint 
about. Now that you know I love you, I 
hope that 

The conversation was interrupted at this 
juncture by the grating of a key in the lock 
of the chamber door. 

Omphale started and blushed to the very 
whites of her eyes. 

“ Adieu," she whispered, " till to-mor- 
row." And she returned to her place on 
the wall, walking backward, for fear that I 
should see her reverse side, doubtless. 

It was Baptiste, who came to brush my 
clothes. 


OMPHALE : A ROCOCO STORY 


263 


“ You ought not to sleep with your bed- 
curtains open, sir," he remarked. " You 
might catch a bad cold. This room is so 
chilly." 

The curtains were actually open, and as I 
had been under the impression that I was 
only dreaming, I felt very much astonished, 
for I was certain that they had been closed 
when I went to bed. 

As soon as Baptiste left the room, I ran 
to the tapestry. I felt it all over. It was 
indeed a real woollen tapestry, rough to the 
touch like any other tapestry. Omphale 
resembled the charming phantom of the 
night only as a dead body resembles a liv- 
ing one. I lifted the hangings. The wall 
was solid throughout. There were no 
masked panels or secret doors. I only no- 
ticed that a few threads were broken in the 
groundwork of the tapestry where the feet 
of Omphale rested. This afforded me food 
for reflection. 

All that day I remained buried in the 
deepest brown study imaginable. I longed 
for evening with a mingled feeling of anx- 
iety and impatience. I retired early, re- 


264 


OMPHALE ; A ROCOCO STORY 


solved on learning how this mystery was 
going to end. I got into bed. The mar- 
chioness did not keep me waiting long. She 
leaped down from the tapestry in front of 
the pier-glass, and dropped right by my 
bed. She seated herself by my pillow, and 
the conversation commenced. 

I asked her questions as I had done the 
evening before, and demanded explana- 
tions. She eluded the former, and re- 
plied in an evasive manner to the latter, 
yet always after so witty a fashion that 
within a quarter of an hour I felt no scru- 
ples whatever in regard to my liaison with 
her. 

While conversing she passed her fingers 
through my hair, tapped me gently on the 
cheeks, and softly kissed my forehead. 

She chatted and chatted in a pretty mock- 
ing way, in a style at once elegantly polished 
and yet familiar and altogether like a great 
lady, such as I have never since heard from 
the lips of any human being. 

She was then seated upon the easy-chair 
beside the bed. In a little while she slipped 
one of her arms around my neck, and I felt 


OMPHALE: A ROCOCO STORY 265 

her heart beating passionately against me. 
It was indeed a charming and handsome real 
woman, a veritable marchioness whom I 
found beside me, poor student of seven- 
teen ! There was more than enough to make 
one lose his head, so I lost mine. I did not 
know very well what was going to happen, 
but I felt a vague presentiment that it would 
displease the marquis, 

“ And Monsieur le Marquis, on the wall 
up there — what will he say ? ’ * 

The lion's skin had fallen to the floor, and 
the soft lilac-colored buskins, filigreed with 
silver, were lying beside my shoes. 

“ He will not say anything," replied the 
marchioness, laughing heartily. " Do you 
suppose he ever sees anything ? Besides, 
even should he see, he is the most philo- 
sophical and inoffensive husband in the 
world. He is used to such things. Do you 
love me, little one ? " 

“ Indeed I do, ever so much ! — ever so 
much! " 

Morning dawned. My mistress stole 
away. 


266 


OMPHALE : A ROCOCO STORY 


The day seemed to me frightfully long. 
At last evening came. The same things 
happened as on the evening before, and the 
second night left no regrets for the first. 
The marchioness became more and more 
adorable, and this state of affairs continued 
for a long time. As I never slept at night, 
I wore a somnolent expression in the day- 
time which did not augur well for me with 
my uncle. He suspected something. He 
probably listened at the door and heard 
everything, for one fine morning he entered 
my room so brusquely that Antoinette had 
scarcely time to get back to her place on the 
tapestry. 

He was followed by a tapestry-hanger with 
pincers and a ladder. 

He looked at me with a shrewd and severe 
expression which convinced me that he knew 
all. 

This Marchioness de T is certainly 

crazy. What the devil could have put it 
into her head to fall in love with a brat 
like that?” muttered my uncle between 
his teeth. “ She promised to behave her- 
self. 


OMPHALE : A ROCOCO STORY 


267 


“ Jean, take that tapestry down, roll it 
up, and put it in the garret." 

Every word my uncle spoke went through 
my heart like a poniard-thrust. 

Jean rolled up my sweetheart Omphale, 
otherwise the Marchioness Antoinette de 
T , together with Hercules, or the Mar- 
quis de T , and carried the whole thing 

off to the garret. I could not restrain my 
tears. 

Next day my uncle sent me back in the 

B diligence to my respectable parents, 

to whom, you may feel assured, I never 
breathed a word of my adventure. 

My uncle died ; his house and furniture 
were sold ; probably the tapestry was sold 
with the rest. 

But a long time afterward, while foraging 
the shop of a bric-a-brac merchant in search 
of oddities, I stumbled over a great dusty 
roll of something covered with cobwebs. 

"What is that?" I said to the Auver- 
gnat. 

" That is a rococo tapestry representing 
the amours of Madame Omphale and Mon- 
sieur Hercule. It is genuine Beauvais, 


268 


OMPHALE : A ROCOCO STORY 


worked in silk, and in an excellent state of 
preservation. Buy this from me for your 
study. I will not charge you dear for it, 
since it is you.” 

At the name of Omphale all my blood 
rushed to my heart. 

” Unroll that tapestry,” I said to the mer- 
chant in a hurried, gasping voice, like one 
in a fever. 

It was indeed she! I fancied that her 
mouth smiled graciously at me, and that her 
eye lighted up on meeting mine. 

” How much do you ask ? ” 

” Well, I could not possibly let you have 
it for any less than five hundred francs.” 

” I have not that much with me now. I 
will get it and be back in an hour.” 

I returned with the money, but the tapes- 
try was no longer there. An Englishman 
had bargained for it during my absence, 
offered six hundred francs for it, and taken 
it away with him. 

After all, perhaps it was best that it 
should have been thus, and that I should 
preserve this delicious souvenir intact. 
They say one should never return to a first 


OMPHALE : A ROCOCO STORY 269 

love, or look at the rose which one admired 
the evening before. 

And then I am no longer so young or so 
pretty that tapestries should come down 
from their walls to honor me. 



fj 

/j 


King Candaules 



CHAPTER I 

Five hundred years before the Trojan 
war, and seventeen hundred and fifteen 
years before our own era, there was a grand 
festival at Sardes. King Candaules was 
going to marry. The people were affected 
with that sort of pleasurable interest and 
aimless emotion wherewith any royal event 
inspires the masses, even though it in no 
wise concerns them, and transpires in supe- 
rior spheres of life which they can never 
hope to reach. 

As soon as Phoebus-Apollo, standing in 
his quadriga, had gilded to saffron the sum- 
mits of fertile Mount Tmolus with his rays, 
the good people of Sardes were all astir, 
j8 


274 


KING CANDAULES 


going and coming, mounting or descending 
the marble stairways leading from the city 
to the waters of the Pactolus, that opulent 
river whose sands Midas filled with tiny 
sparks of gold when he bathed in its stream. 
One would have supposed that each one of 
these good citizens was himself about to 
marry, so solemn and important was the 
demeanor of all. 

Men were gathering in groups in the 
Agora, upon the steps of the temples and 
along the porticoes. At every street corner 
one might have encountered women leading 
by the hand little children, whose uneven 
walk ill suited the maternal anxiety and im- 
patience. Maidens were hastening to the 
fountains, all with urns gracefully balanced 
upon their heads, or sustained by their white 
arms as with natural handles, so as to pro- 
cure early the necessary water provision for 
the household, and thus obtain leisure at 
the hour when the nuptial procession should 
pass. Washerwomen hastily folded the still 
damp tunics and chlamidae, and piled them 
upon mule-wagons. Slaves turned the mill 
without any need of the overseer's whip to 


KING CANDAULES 


275 


tickle their naked and scar-seamed shoulders. 
Sardes was hurrying itself to finish with 
those necessary every-day cares which no 
festival can wholly disregard. 

The road along which the procession was 
to pass had been strewn with fine yellow 
sand. Brazen tripods, disposed along the 
way at regular intervals, sent up to heaven 
the odorous smoke of cinnamon and spike- 
nard. These vapors, moreover, alone 
clouded the purity of the azure above. The 
clouds of a hymeneal day ought, indeed, to 
be formed only by the burning of perfumes. 
Myrtle and rose-laurel branches were strewn 
upon the ground, and from the walls of the 
palaces were suspended by little rings of 
bronze rich tapestries, whereon the needles 
of industrious captives — intermingling wool, 
silver, and gold — had represented various 
scenes in the history of the gods and heroes : 
Ixion embracing the cloud ; Diana surprised 
in the bath by Actaeon ; the shepherd Paris 
as judge in the contest of beauty held upon 
Mount Ida between Hera, the snowy-armed, 
Athena of the sea-green eyes, and Aphro- 
dite, girded with her magic cestus ; the old 


276 


KING CANDAULES 


men of Troy rising to honor Helena as she 
passed through the Skaian gate, a subject 
taken from one of the poems of the blind 
man of Meles. Others exhibited in prefer- 
ence scenes taken from the life of Heracles 
the Theban, through flattery to Candaules, 
himself a Heracleid, being descended from 
the hero through Alcaeus. Others contented 
themselves by decorating the entrances of 
their dwellings with garlands and wreaths in 
token of rejoicing. 

Among the multitudes marshalled along 
the way from the royal house even as far as 
the gates of the city, through which the 
young queen would pass on her arrival, con- 
versation naturally turned upon the beauty 
of the bride, whereof the renown had spread 
throughout all Asia; and upon the character 
of the bridegroom, who, although not alto- 
gether an eccentric, seemed nevertheless one 
not readily appreciated from the common 
standpoint of observation. 

Nyssia, daughter of the Satrap Megabazus, 
was gifted with marvellous purity of feature 
and perfection of form ; at least such was the 
rumor spread abroad by the female slaves 


KING CANDAULES 


277 


who attended her, and a few female friends 
who had accompanied her to the bath ; for 
no man could boast of knowing aught of 
Nyssia save the color of her veil and the 
elegant folds that she involuntarily im- 
pressed upon the soft materials which robed 
her statuesque body. 

The barbarians did not share the ideas of 
the Greeks in regard to modesty. While the 
youths of Achaia made no scruple of allow- 
ing their oil-anointed torsos to shine under 
the sun in the stadium, and while the Spar- 
tan virgins danced ungarmented before the 
altar of Diana, those of Persepolis, Ebac- 
tana, and Bactria, attaching more import- 
ance to chastity of the body than to chastity 
of mind, considered those liberties allowed 
to the pleasure of the eyes by Greek man- 
ner as impure and highly reprehensible, and 
held no woman virtuous who permitted men 
to obtain a glimpse of more than the tip of 
her foot in walking, as it slightly deranged 
the discreet folds of a long tunic. 

Despite all this mystery, or rather, per- 
haps, by very reason of this mystery, the 
fame of Nyssia had not been slow to spread 


278 


KING CANDAULES 


throughout all Lydia, and become popular 
there to such a degree that it had reached 
even Candaules, although kings are ordi- 
narily the most illy informed people in their 
kingdoms, and live like the gods in a kind 
of cloud which conceals from them the 
knowledge of terrestrial things. 

The Eupatridae of Sardes, who hoped that 
the young king might, perchance, choose a 
wife from their family, the hetairae of 
Athens, of Samos, of Miletus and of Cyprus, 
the beautiful slaves from the banks of the 
Indus, the blonde girls brought at a vast ex- 
pense from the depths of the Cimmerian 
fogs, were heedful never to utter in the pres- 
ence of Candaules, whether within hearing 
or beyond hearing, a single word which bore 
any relation to Nyssia. The bravest, in a 
question of beauty, recoil before the pros- 
pect of a contest in which they can antici- 
pate being outrivalled. 

And nevertheless no person in Sardes, or 
even in Lydia, had beheld this redoubtable 
adversary, no person save one solitary being, 
who from the time of that encounter had 
kept his lips as firmly closed upon the sub- 


KING CANDAULES 


279 


ject as though Harpocrates, the god of 
silence, had sealed them with his finger, and 
that was Gyges, chief of the guards of Can- 
daules. One day Gyges, his mind filled 
with various projects and vague ambitions, 
had been wandering among the Bactrian 
hills, whither his master had sent him upon 
an important and secret mission. He was 
dreaming of the intoxication of omnipotence, 
of treading upon purple with sandals of gold, 
of placing the diadem upon the brows of the 
fairest of women. These thoughts made his 
blood boil in his veins, and, as though to 
pursue the flight of his dreams, he smote his 
sinewy heel upon the foam-whitened flanks 
of his Numidian horse. 

The weather, at first calm, had changed 
and waxed tempestuous like the warrior’s 
soul; and Boreas, his locks bristling with 
Thracian frosts, his cheeks puffed out, his 
arms folded upon his breast, smote the rain- 
freighted clouds with the mighty beatings 
of his wings. 

A bevy of young girls who had been gath- 
ering flowers in the meadow, fearing the 
coming storm, were returning to the city in 


28 o 


KING CANDAULES 


all haste, each carrying her perfumed har- 
vest in the lap of her tunic. Seeing a 
stranger on horseback approaching in the 
distance, they had hidden their faces in their 
mantles, after the custom of the barbarians; 
but at the very moment that Gyges was 
passing by the one whose proud carriage and 
richer habiliments seemed to designate her 
the mistress of the little band, an unusually 
violent gust of wind carried away the veil of 
the fair unknown, and, whirling it through 
the air like a feather, chased it to such a dis- 
tance that it could not be recovered. It 
was Nyssia, daughter of Megabazus, who 
found herself thus with face unveiled in the 
presence of Gyges, an humble captain of 
King Candaules’ guard. Was it only the 
breath of Boreas which had brought about 
this accident, or had Eros, who delights to 
vex the hearts of men, amused himself by 
severing the string which had fastened the 
protecting tissue ? However that may have 
been, Gyges was stricken motionless at the 
sight of that Medusa of beauty, and not till 
long after the folds of Nyssia’s robe had dis- 
appeared beyond the gates of the city could 


KING CANDAULES 


281 


he think of proceeding on his way. Al- 
though there was nothing to justify such a 
conjecture, he cherished the belief that he 
had seen the satrap’s daughter; and that 
meeting, which affected him almost like 
an apparition, accorded so fully with the 
thoughts which were occupying him at the 
moment of its occurrence, that he could not 
help perceiving therein something fateful 
and ordained of the gods. In truth it was 
upon that brow that he would have wished 
to place the diadem. What other could be 
more worthy of it ? But what probability 
was there that Gyges would ever have a 
throne to share ? He had not sought to 
follow up this adventure, and assure himself 
whether it was indeed the daughter of Mega- 
bazus whose mysterious face had been re- 
vealed to him by Chance, the great filcher. 
Nyssia had fled so swiftly that it would have 
been impossible for him then to overtake 
her; and, moreover, he had been dazzled, 
fascinated, thunder-stricken, as it were, 
rather than charmed by that superhuman 
apparition, by that monster of beauty! 

Nevertheless that image, although seen 


282 


KING CANDAULES 


only in the glimpse of a moment, had en- 
graved itself upon his heart in lines deep as 
those which the sculptors trace on ivory with 
tools reddened in the fire. He had endeav- 
ored, although vainly, to efface it, for the 
love which he felt for Nyssia inspired him 
with a secret terror. Perfection in such a 
degree is ever awe-inspiring, and women so 
like unto goddesses could only work evil to 
feeble mortals ; they are formed for divine 
adulteries, and even the most courageous 
men never risk themselves in such amours 
without trembling. Therefore no hope had 
blossomed in the soul of Gyges, overwhelmed 
and discouraged in advance by the sentiment 
of the impossible. Ere opening his lips to 
Nyssia he would have wished to despoil the 
heaven of its robe of stars, to take from 
Phoebus his crown of rays, forgetting that 
women only give themselves to those un- 
worthy of them, and that to win their love 
one must act as though he desired to earn 
their hate. 

From that day the roses of joy no longer 
bloomed upon his cheeks. By day he was 
sad and mournful, and seemed to wander 


KING CANDAULES 


283 


abroad in solitary dreaming, like a mortal 
who has beheld a divinity. At night he was 
haunted by dreams in which he beheld 
Nyssia seated by his side upon cushions of 
purple between the golden griffins of the 
royal throne. 

Therefore Gyges, the only one who could 
speak of his own knowledge concerning 
Nyssia, having never spoken of her, the Sar- 
dians were left to their own conjectures in 
her regard ; and their conjectures, it must 
be confessed, were fantastic and altogether 
fabulous. The beauty of Nyssia, thanks to 
the veils which shrouded her, became a sort 
of myth, a canvas, a poem to which each 
one added ornamentation as the fancy took 
him. 

“ If report be not false,*' lisped a young 
debauchee from Athens, who stood with one 
hand upon the shoulder of an Asiatic boy, 
“ neither Plangon, nor Archianassa, nor 
Thais can be compared with this marvellous 
barbarian ; yet I can scarce believe that she 
equals Theano of Colophon, from whom I 
once bought a single night at the price of as 
much gold as she could bear away, after hav- 


284 


KING CANDAULES 


ing plunged both her white arms up to the 
shoulder in my cedar- wood coffer/’ 

“ Beside her,” added a Eupatrid, who pre- 
tended to be better informed than any other 
person upon all manner of subjects, “ beside 
her the daughter of Coelus and the Sea 
would seem but a mere Ethiopian servant.” 

” Your words are blasphemy, and although 
Aphrodite be a kind and indulgent goddess, 
beware of drawing down her anger upon 
you.” 

” By Hercules! — and that ought to be an 
oath of some weight in a city ruled by one 
of his descendants — I cannot retract a word 
of it.” 

” You have seen her, then ? ” 

” No; but I have a slave in my service 
who once belonged to Nyssia, and who has 
told me a hundred stories about her.” 

” Is it true,” demanded in infantile tones 
an equivocal-looking woman whose pale-rose 
tunic, painted cheeks, and locks shining 
with essences betrayed wretched pretensions 
to a youth long passed away — ” is it true 
that Nyssia has two pupils in each eye ? It 
seems to me that must be very ugly, and I 


KING CANDAULES 


285 


cannot understand how Candaules could fall 
in love with such a monstrosity, while there 
is no lack, at Sardes and in Lydia, of women 
whose eyes are irreproachable/’ 

And uttering these words with all sorts of 
affected airs and simperings. Lamia took a 
little significant peep in a small mirror of 
cast metal which she drew from her bosom, 
and which enabled her to lead back to duty 
certain wandering curls disarranged by the 
impertinence of the wind. 

As to the double pupil, that seems to 
me nothing more than an old nurse’s tale,” 
observed the well-informed patrician; ” but 
it is a fact that Nyssia’s eyes are so piercing 
that she can see through walls. Lynxes are 
myopic compared with her.” 

” How can a sensible man coolly argue 
about such an absurdity?” interrupted a 
citizen, whose bald skull, and the flood of 
snowy beard into which he plunged his 
fingers while speaking, lent him an air of 
preponderance and philosophical sagacity. 
” The truth is that the daughter of Mega- 
bazus cannot naturally see through a wall 
any better than you or I, but the Egyptian 


286 


KING CANDAULES 


priest Thoutmosis, who knows so many 
wondrous secrets, has given her the mysteri- 
ous stone which is found in the heads of 
dragons, and whose property, as every one 
knows, renders all shadows and the most 
opaque bodies transparent to the eyes of 
those who possess it. Nyssia always carries 
this stone in her girdle, or else set into her 
bracelet, and in that may be found the secret 
of her clairvoyance.” 

The citizen’s explanation seemed the most 
natural one to those of the group whose con- 
versation we are endeavoring to reproduce, 
and the opinions of Lamia and the patrician 
were abandoned as improbable. 

” At all events,” returned the lover of 
Theano, ” we are going to have an oppor- 
tunity of judging for ourselves, for it seems 
to me that I hear the clarions sounding in 
the distance, and though Nyssia is still in- 
visible, I can see the herald yonder approach- 
ing with palm-branches in his hands, to an- 
nounce the arrival of the nuptial cortige^ and 
make the crowd fall back.” 

At this news, which spread rapidly through 
the crowd, the strong men elbowed their 


KING CANDAULES 


287 


way toward the front ranks ; the agile boys, 
embracing the shafts of the columns, sought 
to climb up to the capitals and there seat 
themselves; others, not without having 
skinned their knees against the bark, suc- 
ceeded in perching themselves comfortably 
enough in the Y of some tree-branch. The 
women lifted their little children upon their 
shoulders, warning them to hold tightly to 
their necks. Those who had the good for- 
tune to dwell on the street along which Can- 
daules and Nyssia were about to pass, leaned 
over from the summit of their roofs, or, ris- 
ing on their elbows, abandoned for a time 
the cushions upon which they had been re- 
clining. 

A murmur of satisfaction and gratified ex- 
pectation ran through the crowd, which had 
already been waiting many long hours, for 
the arrows of the midday sun were com- 
mencing to sting. 

The heavy-armed warriors, with cuirasses 
of bull’s-hide covered with overlapping plates 
of metal, helmets adorned with plumes of 
horse-hair dyed red, knemides or greaves 
faced with tin, baldrics studded with nails, 


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emblazoned bucklers, and swords of brass, 
rode behind a line of trumpeters who blew 
with might and main upon their long tubes, 
which gleamed under the sunlight. The 
horses of these warriors were all white as the 
feet of Thetis, and might have served, by 
reason of their noble paces and purity of 
breeds, as models for those which Phidias at 
a later day sculptured upon the metopes of 
the Parthenon. 

At the head of this troop rode Gyges, the 
well-named, for his name in the Lydian 
tongue signifies beautiful. His features, of 
the most exquisite regularity, seemed chis- 
elled in marble, owing to his intense pallor, 
for he had just discovered in Nyssia, although 
she was veiled with the veil of a young 
bride, the same woman whose face had 
been betrayed to his gaze by the treachery 
of Boreas under the walls of Bactria. 

Handsome Gyges looks very sad,'’ said 
the young maidens. “ What proud beauty 
could have secured his love, or what forsaken 
one has caused some Thessalian witch to 
cast a spell on him ? Has that cabalistic 
ring (which he is said to have found hidden 


KING CANDAULES 


289 


within the flanks of a brazen horse in the 
midst of some forest) lost its virtue, and sud- 
denly ceasing to render its owner invisible, 
have betrayed him to the astonished eyes of 
some innocent husband, who had deemed 
himself alone in his conjugal chamber ?” 

“ Perhaps he has been wasting his talents 
and his drachmas at the game of Palamedes, 
or else it may be that he is disappointed at not 
having won the prize at the Olympian games. 
He had great faith in his horse Hyperion. ’’ 

No one of these conjectures was true. A 
fact is never guessed. 

After the battalion commanded byGyges, 
there came young boys crowned with myrtle- 
wreaths, and singing epithalamic hymns 
after the Lydian manner, accompanying 
themselves upon lyres of ivory, which they 
played with bows. All were clad in rose- 
colored tunics ornamented with a silver 
Greek border, and their long hair flowed 
down over their shoulders in thick curls. 

They preceded the gift-bearers, strong 
slaves whose half-nude bodies exposed to 
view such interlacements of muscle as the 
stoutest athletes might have envied. 

19 


290 


KING CANDAULES 


Upon brancards, supported by two or four 
men or more, according to the weight of the 
objects borne, were placed enormous brazen 
cratera, chiselled by the most famous artists: 
vases of gold and silver whose sides were 
adorned with bas-reliefs and whose hands 
were elegantly worked into chimeras, foli- 
age, and nude women ; magnificent ewers to 
be used in washing the feet of illustrious 
guests; flagons incrusted with precious 
stones and containing the rarest perfumes ; 
myrrh from Arabia, cinnamon from the In- 
dies, spikenard from Persia, essence of roses 
from Smyrna; kamklins or perfuming pans, 
with perforated covers ; cedar- wood or ivory 
coffers of marvellous workmanship, which 
opened with a secret spring that none save 
the inventor could find, and which contained 
bracelets wrought from the gold of Ophir, 
necklaces of the most lustrous pearls, mantle- 
brooches constellated with rubies and carbun- 
cles; toilet boxes containing blonde sponges, 
curling-irons, sea-wolves’ teeth to polish the 
nails, the green rouge of Egypt, which turns 
to a most beautiful pink on touching the 
skin, powders to darken the eyelashes and 


KING CANDAULES 


291 


eyebrows, and all the refinements that fem- 
inine coquetry could invent. Other litters 
were freighted with purple robes of the finest 
linen and of all possible shades from the in- 
carnadine hue of the rose to the deep crim- 
son of the blood of the grape ; calasires of 
the linen of Canopus, which is thrown all 
white into the vat of the dyer, and comes 
forth again, owing to the various astringents 
in which it had been steeped, diapered with 
the most brilliant colors; tunics brought 
from the fabulous land of Seres, made from 
the spun slime of a worm which feeds upon 
leaves, and so fine that they might be drawn 
through a finger-ring. 

Ethiopians, whose bodies shone like jet, 
and whose temples were tightly bound with 
cords, lest they should burst the veins of 
their foreheads in the effort to uphold their 
burden, carried in great pomp a statue of 
Hercules, the ancestor of Candaules, of colos- 
sal size, wrought of ivory and gold, with the 
club, the skin of the Nemean lion, the three 
apples from the garden of the Hesperides, 
and all the traditional attributes of the hero. 

Statues of Venus Urania, and of Venus 


292 


KING CANDAULES 


Genitrix, sculptured by the best pupils of 
the Sicyon School in that marble of Paros 
whose gleaming transparency seemed ex- 
pressly created for the representation of the 
ever-youthful flesh of the immortals, were 
borne after the statue of Hercules, which 
admirably relieved the harmony and elegance 
of their proportions by contrast with its mas- 
sive outlines and rugged forms. 

A painting by Bularchus, which Candaules 
had purchased for its weight in gold, exe- 
cuted upon the wood of the female larch- 
tree, and representing the defeat of the Mag- 
nesians, evoked universal admiration by the 
beauty of its design, the truthfulness of the 
attitude of its figures, and the harmony of 
its coloring, although the artist had only em- 
ployed in its production the four primitive 
colors: Attic ochre, white, Pontic sinopisy 
and atramentum. The young king loved 
painting and sculpture even more, perhaps, 
than well became a monarch, and he had not 
unfrequently bought a picture at a price 
equal to the annual revenue of a whole city. 

Camels and dromedaries, splendidly capar- 
isoned, with musicians seated on their necks 


KING CANDAULES 


293 


performing upon drums and cymbals, car- 
ried the gilded stakes, the cords, and the ma- 
terial of the tent designed for the use of the 
queen during voyages and hunting parties. 

These spectacles of magnificence would 
upon any other occasion have ravished the 
people of Sardes with delight, but their curi- 
osity had been enlisted in another direction, 
and it was not without a certain feeling of 
impatience that they watched this portion 
of the procession file by. The young maid- 
ens and the handsome boys, bearing flam- 
ing torches, and strewing handfuls of crocus 
flowers along the way, hardly attracted any 
attention. The idea of beholding Nyssia 
had preoccupied all minds. 

At last Candaules appeared, riding in a 
chariot drawn by four horses, as beautiful 
and spirited as those of the sun, all rolling 
their golden bits in foam, shaking their pur- 
ple-decked manes, and restrained with great 
difificulty by the driver, who stood erect at 
the side of Candaules, and was leaning back 
to gain more power on the reins. 

Candaules was a young man full of vigor, 
and well worthy of his Herculean origin. 


294 


KING CANDAULES 


His head was joined to his shoulders by a 
neck massive as a bull’s, and almost without 
a curve ; his hair, black and lustrous, twisted 
itself into rebellious little curls, here and 
there concealing the circlet of his diadem ; 
his ears, small and upright, were of a ruddy 
hue ; his forehead was broad and full, though 
a little low, like all antique foreheads; his 
eyes full of gentle melancholy, his oval 
cheeks, his chin with its gentle and regular 
curves, his mouth with its slightly parted 
lips — all bespoke the nature of the poet 
rather than that of the warrior. In fact, 
although he was brave, skilled in all bodily 
exercises, could subdue a wild horse as well 
as any of the Lapithae, or swim across the 
current of rivers when they descended, 
swollen with melted snow, from the moun- 
tains, although he might have bent the bow 
of Odysseus or borne the shield of Achilles, 
he seemed little occupied with dreams of 
conquest ; and war, usually so fascinating to 
young kings, had little attraction for him. 
He contented himself with repelling the at- 
tacks of his ambitious neighbors, and sought 
not to extend his own dominions. He pre- 


KING CANDAULES 


29s 


ferred building palaces, after plans suggested 
by himself to the architects, who always 
found the king’s hints of no small value, or 
to form collections of statues and paintings 
by artists of the elder and later schools. He 
had the works of Telephanes of Sicyon, 
Cleanthes, Ardices of Corinth, Hygiemon, 
Deinias, Charmides, Eumarus, and Cimon, 
some being simple drawings, and other paint- 
ings in various colors or monochromes. It 
was even said that Candaules had not dis- 
dained to wield with his own royal hands — 
a thing hardly becoming a prince — the chisel 
of the sculptor and the sponge of the en- 
caustic painter. 

But why should we dwell upon Candaules ? 
The reader undoubtedly feels like the peo- 
ple of Sardes: and it is of Nyssia that he 
desires to hear. 

The daughter of Megabazus was mounted 
upon an elephant, with wrinkled skin and 
immense ears which seemed like flags, who 
advanced with a heavy but rapid gait, like a 
vessel in the midst of the waves. His tusks 
and his trunk were encircled with silver rings, 
and around the pillars of his limbs were en- 


2g6 


KING CANDAULES 


twined necklaces of enormous pearls. Upon 
his back, which was covered with a magnifi- 
cent Persian carpet of striped pattern, stood 
a sort of estrade overlaid with gold finely 
chased, and constellated with onyx stones, 
carnelians, chrysolites, lapis-lazuli, and gira- 
sols; upon this estrade sat the young queen, 
so covered with precious stones as to dazzle 
the eyes of the beholders. A mitre, shaped 
like a helmet, on which pearls formed flower 
designs and letters after the Oriental man- 
ner, was placed upon her head; her ears, 
both the lobes and rims of which had been 
pierced, were adorned with ornaments in the 
form of little cups, crescents, and balls ; 
necklaces of gold and silver beads, which had 
been hollowed out and carved, thrice encir- 
cled her neck and descended with a metallic 
tinkling upon her bosom ; emerald serpents 
with topaz or ruby eyes coiled themselves 
in many folds about her arms, and clasped 
themselves by biting their own tails. These 
bracelets were connected by chains of pre- 
cious stones, and so great was their weight 
that two attendants were required to kneel 
beside Nyssia and support her elbows. She 


KING CANDAULES 


297 


was clad in a robe embroidered by Syrian 
workmen with shining designs of golden foli- 
age and diamond fruits, and over this she 
wore the short tunic of Persepolis, which 
hardly descended to the knee, and of which 
the sleeves were slit and fastened by sap- 
phire clasps. Her waist was encircled from 
hip to loins by a girdle wrought of narrow 
material, variegated with stripes and flow- 
ered designs, which formed themselves into 
symmetrical patterns as they were brought 
together by a certain arrangement of the 
folds which Indian girls alone know how to 
make. Her trousers of byssus, which the 
Phoenicians called syndon^ were confined at 
the ankles by anklets adorned with gold and 
silver bells, and completed this toilet, so fan- 
tastically rich and wholly opposed to Greek 
taste. But, alas! a saffron-colored flam- 
meum pitilessly masked the face of Nyssia, 
who seemed embarrassed, veiled though she 
was, at finding so many eyes fixed upon her, 
and frequently signed to a slave behind her 
to lower the parasol of ostrich plumes, and 
thus conceal her yet more from the curious 
gaze of the crowd. 


298 


KING CANDAULES 


Candaules had vainly begged of her to lay 
aside her veil, even for that solemn occasion. 
The young barbarian had refused to pay the 
welcome of her beauty to his people. Great 
was the disappointment. Lamia declared 
that Nyssia dared not uncover her face for 
fear of showing her double pupil. The 
young libertine remained convinced that 
Theano of Colophon was more beautiful than 
the queen of Sardes ; and Gyges sighed when 
he beheld Nyssia, after having made her ele- 
phant kneel down, descend upon the inclined 
heads of Damascus slaves as upon a living 
ladder, to the threshold of the royal dwell- 
ing, where the elegance of Greek architec- 
ture was blended with the fantasies and 
enormities of Asiatic taste. 


CHAPTER II 

In our character of poet we have the right 
to lift the saffron-colored jlamtneum which 
concealed the young bride, being more for- 
tunate in this wise than the Sardians, who 
after a whole day’s waiting were obliged to 


KING CANDAULES 


299 

return to their houses and were left, as be- 
fore, to their own conjectures. 

Nyssia was really far superior to her repu- 
tation, great as it was. It seemed as though 
Nature in creating her had resolved to ex- 
haust her utmost powers, and thus make 
atonement for all former experimental at- 
tempts and fruitless essays. One would 
have said that, moved by jealousy of the 
future marvels of the Greek sculptors, she 
also had resolved to model a statue herself, 
and to prove that she was still sovereign 
mistress in the plastic art. 

The grain of snow, the micaceous bril- 
liancy of Parian marble, the sparkling pulp 
of balsamine flowers, would render but a 
feeble idea of the ideal substance whereof 
Nyssia had been formed. That flesh, so 
fine, so delicate, permitted daylight to pene- 
trate it, and modelled itself in transparent 
contours, in lines as sweetly harmonious as 
music itself. According to different sur- 
roundings, it took the color of the sunlight 
or of purple, like the aromal body of a divin- 
ity, and seemed to radiate light and life. 
The world of perfections inclosed within the 


300 


KING CANDAULES 


nobly-lengthened oval of her chaste face 
could have been rendered by no earthly art 
— neither by the chisel of the sculptor, nor 
the brush of the painter, nor the style of any 
poet — though it were Praxiteles, Apelles, or 
Mimnernus ; and on her smooth brow, bathed 
by waves of hair amber-bright as molten 
electrum and sprinkled with gold filings, 
according to the Babylonian custom, sat as 
upon a jasper throne the unalterable serenity 
of perfect loveliness. 

As for her eyes, though they did not jus- 
tify what popular credulity said of them, 
they were at least wonderfully strange eyes ; 
brown eyebrows, with extremities ending in 
points elegant as those of the arrows of Eros, 
and which were joined to each other by a 
streak of henna after the Asiatic fashion, 
and long fringes of silkily-shadowed eye- 
lashes contrasted strikingly with the twin 
sapphire stars rolling in the heaven of dark 
silver which formed those eyes. The irises 
of those eyes, whose pupils were blacker 
than atrament, varied singularly in shades of 
shifting color. From sapphire they changed 
to turquoise, from turquoise to beryl, from 


KING CANDAULES 


301 


beryl to yellow amber, and sometimes, like 
a limpid lake whose bottom is strewn with 
jewels, they offered, through their incalcula- 
ble depths, glimpses of golden and diamond 
sands upon which green fibrils vibrated and 
twisted- themselves into emerald serpents. 
In those orbs of phosphoric lightning the 
rays of suns extinguished, the splendors of 
vanished worlds, the glories of Olympus 
eclipsed — all seemed to have concentrated 
their reflections. When contemplating them 
one thought of eternity, and felt himself 
seized with a mighty giddiness, as though 
he were leaning over the verge of the In- 
finite. 

The expression of those extraordinary 
eyes was not less variable than their tint. 
At times their lids opened like the portals of 
celestial dwellings; they invited you into 
elysiums of light, of azure, of ineffable felic- 
ity; they promised you the realization, 
tenfold, a hundredfold, of all your dreams 
of happiness, as though they had divined 
your soul’s most secret thoughts; again, im- 
penetrable as sevenfold plated shields of the 
hardest metals, they flung back your gaze 


302 


KING CANDAULES 


like blunted and broken arrows. With a 
simple inflexion of the brow, a mere flash of 
the pupil, more terrible than the thunder of 
Zeus, they precipitated you from the heights 
of your most ambitious escalades into depths 
of nothingness so profound that it was im- 
possible to rise again. Typhon himself, who 
writhes under ^tna, could not have lifted 
the mountains of disdain with which they 
overwhelmed you. One felt that though he 
should live for a thousand Olympiads en- 
dowed with the beauty of the fair son of 
Latona, the genius of Orpheus, the un- 
bounded might of Assyrian kings, the treas- 
ures of the Cabeirei, the Telchines, and the 
Dactyli, gods of subterranean wealth, he 
could never change their expression to mild- 
ness. 

At other times their languishment was 
so liquidly persuasive, their brilliancy and 
irradiation so penetrating, that the icy cold- 
ness of Nestor and Priam would have melted 
under their gaze, like the wax of the wings 
of Icarus when he approached the flaming 
zones. For one such glance a man would 
have gladly steeped his hands in the blood 


KING CANDAULES 


303 


of his host, scattered the ashes of his father 
to the four winds, overthrown the holy im- 
ages of the gods, and stolen the fire of heaven 
itself, like the sublime thief, Prometheus. 

Nevertheless, their most ordinary expres- 
sion, it must be confessed, was of a chastity 
to make one desperate — a sublime coldness 
— an ignorance of all possibilities of human 
passion, such as would have made the moon- 
bright eyes of Phoebe or the sea-green eyes 
of Athena appear by comparison more 
liquidly tempting than those of a young girl 
of Babylon sacrificing to the goddess Mylitta 
within the cord-circled enclosure of Succoth- 
Benohl. Their invincible virginity seemed 
to bid love defiance. 

The cheeks of Nyssia, which no human 
gaze had ever profaned, save that of Gyges 
on the day when the veil was blown away, 
possessed a youthful bloom, a tender pallor, 
a delicacy of grain, and a downiness whereof 
the faces of our women, perpetually exposed 
to sunlight and air, cannot convey the most 
distant idea. Modesty created fleeting rosy 
clouds upon them like those which a drop 
of crimson essence would form in a cup of 


304 


KING CANDAULES 


milk, and when uncolored by any emotion 
they took a silvery sheen, a warm light, like 
an alabaster vessel illumined by a lamp 
within. That lamp was her charming soul, 
which exposed to view the transparency of 
her flesh. 

A bee would have been deceived by her 
mouth, whose form was so perfect, whose 
corners were so purely dimpled, whose crim- 
son was so rich and warm that the gods 
would have descended from their Olympian 
dwellings in order to touch it with lips 
humid with immortality, but that the jeal- 
ousy of the goddesses restrained their im- 
petuosity. Happy the wind which passed 
through that purple and pearl, which dilated 
those pretty nostrils, so finely cut and shaded 
with rosy tints like the mother-of-pearl of 
the shells thrown by the sea on the shore of 
Cyprus at the feet of Venus Anadyomene ! 
But are there not a multitude of favors thus 
granted to things which cannot understand 
them ? What lover would not wish to be 
the tunic of his well-beloved or the water of 
her bath ? 

Such was Nyssia, if we dare make use of 


KING CANDAULES 


305 


the expression after so vague a description 
of her face. If our foggy Northern idioms 
had the warm liberty, the burning enthusi- 
asm of the Sir Hasirim, we might, perhaps, 
by comparisons — awakening in the mind of 
the reader memories of flowers and perfumes, 
of music and sunlight, evoking, by the 
magic of words, all the graceful and charm- 
ing images that the universe can contain — 
have been able to give some idea of Nyssia’s 
features; but it is permitted to Solomon 
alone to compare the nose of a beautiful 
woman to the tower of Lebanon which look- 
eth toward Damascus. And yet what is 
there in the world of more importance than 
the nose of a beautiful woman ? Had Helen, 
the white Tyndarid, been flat-nosed, would 
the Trojan War have taken place ? And if 
the profile of Semiramis had not been per- 
fectly regular, would she have bewitched the 
old monarch of Nineveh and encircled her 
brow with the mitre of pearls, the symbol of 
supreme power ? 

Although Candaules had brought to his 
palace the most beautiful slaves from the 
people of the Sorae, of Askalon, of Sog- 

2Q 


3o6 


KING CANDAULES 


diana, of the Sacae, of Rhapta, the most 
celebrated courtesans from Ephesus, from 
Pergamus, from Smyrna, and from Cyprus, 
he was completely fascinated by the charms 
of Nyssia. Up to that time he had not even 
suspected the existence of such perfection. 

Privileged as a husband to enjoy fully the 
contemplation of this beauty, he found him- 
self dazzled, giddy, like one who leans over 
the edge of an abyss, or fixes his eyes upon 
the sun; he felt himself seized, as it were, 
with the delirium of possession, like a priest 
drunk with the god who fills and moves him. 
All other thoughts disappeared from his 
soul, and the universe seemed to him only 
as a vague mist in the midst of which beamed 
the shining phantom of Nyssia. His happi- 
ness transformed itself into ecstasy, and his 
love into madness. At times his very felic- 
ity terrified him. To be only a wretched 
king, only a remote descendant of a hero 
who had become a god by mighty labors, 
only a common man formed of flesh and 
bone, and without having in aught rendered 
himself worthy of it — without having even, 
like his ancestor, strangled some hydra, or 


KING CANDAULES 


307 


torn some lion asunder — to enjoy a happi- 
ness whereof Zeus of the ambrosial hair 
would scarce be worthy, though lord of all 
Olympus! He felt, as it were, a shame to 
thus hoard up for himself alone so rich a 
treasure, to steal this marvel from the world, 
to be the dragon with scales and claws who 
guarded the living type of the ideal of lovers, 
sculptors, and poets. All they had ever 
dreamed of in their hope, their melancholy, 
and their despair, he possessed — he, Can- 
daules, poor tyrant of Sardes, who had only 
a few wretched coffers filled with pearls, a 
few cisterns filled with gold pieces, and 
thirty or forty thousand slaves, purchased 
or taken in war. 

Candaules’s felicity was too great for him, 
and the strength which he would doubtless 
have found at his command in time of mis- 
fortune was wanting to him in time of hap- 
piness. His joy overflowed from his soul 
like water from a vase placed upon the fire, 
and in the exasperation of his enthusiasm 
for Nyssia he had reached the point of de- 
siring that she were less timid and less mod- 
est, for it cost him no little effort to retain 


3o8 


KING CANDAULES 


in his own breast the secret of such won- 
drous beauty. 

Ah/’ he would murmur to himself dur- 
ing the deep reveries which absorbed him 
at all hours that he did not spend at the 
queen’s side, “how strange a lot is mine! 
I am wretched because of that which would 
make any other husband happy. Nyssia 
will not leave the shadow of the gynaeceum, 
and refuses, with barbarian modesty, to lift 
her veil in the presence of any other than 
myself. Yet with what an intoxication of 
pride would my love behold her, radiantly 
sublime, gaze down upon my kneeling peo- 
ple from the summit of the royal steps, and, 
like the rising dawn, extinguish all those 
pale stars who during the night thought 
themselves suns! Proud Lydian women, 
who believe yourselves beautiful, but for 
Nyssia’s reserve you would appear, even to 
your lovers, as ugly as the oblique-eyed and 
thick-lipped slaves of Nahasi and Kush. 
Were she but once to pass along the streets 
of Sardes with face unveiled, you might in 
vain pull your adorers by the lappet of their 
tunic, for none of them would turn his head, 


KING CANDAULES 


309 


or, if he did, it would be to demand your 
name, so utterly would he have forgotten 
you ! They would rush to precipitate them- 
selves beneath the silver wheels of her char- 
iot, that they might have even the pleasure 
of being crushed by her, like those devotees 
of the Indus who pave the pathway of their 
idol with their bodies. 

“ And you, oh goddesses, whom Paris- 
Alexander judged, had Nyssia appeared 
among you, not one of you would have 
borne away the golden apple, not even 
Aphrodite, despite her cestus and her prom- 
ise to the shepherd-arbiter that she would 
make him beloved by the most beautiful 
woman in the world ! . . . 

“Alas! to think that such beauty is not 
immortal, and that years will alter those 
divine outlines, that admirable hymn of 
forms, that poem whose strophes are con- 
tours, and which no one in the world has 
ever read or may ever read save myself ; to 
be the sole depositary of so splendid a treas- 
ure! If I knew even, by imitating the play 
of light and shadow with the aid of lines and 
colors, how to fix upon wood a reflection of 


310 


KING CANDAULES 


that celestial face ; if marble were not rebel- 
lious to my chisel, how well would I fashion 
in the purest vein of Paros or Pentelicus an 
image of that charming body, which would 
make the proud effigies of the goddesses fall 
from their altars! And long after, when 
deep below the slime of deluges, and beneath 
the dust of ruined cities, the men of future 
ages should find a fragment of that petri- 
fied shadow of Nyssia, they would cry: ‘ Be- 
hold, how the women of this vanished world 
were formed ! ' And they would erect a tem- 
ple wherein to enshrine the divine fragment. 
But I have naught save a senseless admira- 
tion and a love that is madness ! Sole adorer 
of an unknown divinity, I possess no power 
to spread her worship through the world.” 

Thus in Candaules had the enthusiasm of 
the artist extinguished the jealousy of the 
lover. Admiration was mightier than love. 
If in place of Nyssia, daughter of the Satrap, 
Megabazus, all imbued with Oriental ideas, 
he had espoused some Greek girl from 
Athens or Corinth, he would certainly have 
invited to his court the most skilful painters 
and sculptors, and have given them the 


KING CANDAULES 


31I 

queen for their model, as did afterward 
Alexander his favorite Campaspe, who posed 
naked before Apelles. Such a whim would 
have encountered no opposition from a 
woman of the land where even the most 
chaste made a boast of having contributed 
— some for the back, some for the bosom — 
to the perfection of a famous statue. But 
hardly would the bashful Nyssia consent to 
unveil herself in the discreet shadow of the 
thalamus, and the earnest prayers of the 
king really shocked her rather than gave her 
pleasure. The sentiment of duty and obe- 
dience alone induced her to yield at times to 
what she styled the whims of Candaules. 

Sometimes he besought her to allow the 
flood of her hair to flow over her shoulders 
in a river of gold richer than the Pactolus, 
to encircle her brow with a crown of ivy and 
linden leaves like a bacchante of Mount 
Maenalus, to lie, hardly veiled by a cloud of 
tissue finer than woven wind, upon a tiger- 
skin with silver claws and ruby eyes, or to 
stand erect in a great shell of mother-of- 
pearl, with a dew of pearls falling from her 
tresses in lieu of drops of sea-water. 


312 


KING CANDAULES 


When he had placed himself in the best 
position for observation, he became absorbed 
in silent contemplation. His hand, tracing 
vague contours in the air, seemed to be 
sketching the outlines for some picture, and 
he would have remained thus for whole 
hours if Nyssia, soon becoming weary of her 
r 61 e of model, had not reminded him in chill 
and disdainful tones that such amusements 
were unworthy of royal majesty and con- 
trary to the holy laws of matrimony. “ It 
is thus," she would exclaim, as she with- 
drew, draped to her very eyes, into the most 
mysterious recesses of her apartment, ' ‘ that 
one treats a mistress, not a virtuous woman 
of noble blood ! " 

These wise remonstrances did not cure 
Candaules, whose passion augmented in in- 
verse ratio to the coldness shown him by 
the queen. And it had at last brought him 
to that point that he could no longer keep 
the secrets of the nuptial couch. A con- 
fidant became as necessary to him as to the 
prince of a modern tragedy. He did not 
proceed, you may feel assured, to fix his 
choice upon some crabbed philosopher of 


KING CANDAULES 


313 


frowning mien, with a flood of gray-and- 
white beard rolling down over a mantle in 
proud tatters; nor a warrior who could talk 
of nothing save ballista, catapults, and 
scythed chariots; nor a sententious Eupa- 
trid full of counsels and politic maxims; but 
Gyges, whose reputation for gallantry caused 
him to be regarded as a connoisseur in re- 
gard to women. 

One evening he laid his hand upon his 
shoulder in a more than ordinarily familiar 
and cordial manner, and after giving him a 
look of peculiar significance, he suddenly 
strode away from the group of courtiers, 
saying in a loud voice: 

“ Gyges, come and give me your opinion 
in regard to my effigy, which the Sicyon 
sculptors have just finished chiselling on 
the genealogical bas-relief where the deeds 
of my ancestors are celebrated.” 

” O king, your knowledge is greater than 
that of your humble subject, and I know 
not how to express my gratitude for the 
honor you do me in deigning to consult 
me,” replied Gyges, with a sign of assent. 

Candaules and his favorite traversed sev- 


314 


KING CANDAULES 


eral halls ornamented in the Hellenic style, 
where the Corinthian acanthus and the Ionic 
volute bloomed or curled in the capitals of 
the columns, where the friezes were peopled 
with little figures in polychromatic plastique 
representing processions and sacrifices, and 
they finally arrived at a remote portion of 
the ancient palace whose walls were built 
with stones of irregular form, put together 
without cement in the Cyclopean manner. 
This ancient architecture was colossally pro- 
portioned and weirdly grim. The immeas- 
urable genius of the elder civilizations of the 
Orient was there legibly written, and re- 
called the granite and brick debauches of 
Egypt and Assyria. Something of the spirit 
of the ancient architects of the tower of 
Lylax survived in those thick-set pillars 
with their deep-fluted trunks, whose cap- 
itals were formed by four heads of bulls, 
placed forehead to forehead, and bound to- 
gether by knots of serpents that seemed 
striving to devour them, an obscure cos- 
mogonic symbol whereof the meaning was 
no longer intelligible, and had descended 
into the tomb with the hierophants of pre- 


KING CANDAULES 


315 


ceding ages. The gates were neither of a 
square nor rounded form. They described 
a sort of ogive much resembling the mitre 
of the Magi, and by their fantastic character 
gave still more intensity to the character of 
the building. 

This portion of the palace formed a sort 
of court surrounded by a portico whose archi- 
tecture was ornamented with the genealogi- 
cal bas-relief to which Candaules had alluded. 

In the midst thereof sat Heracles upon a 
throne, with the upper part of his body un- 
covered, and his feet resting upon a stool, 
according to the rite for the representation 
of divine personages. His colossal propor- 
tions would otherwise have left no doubt as 
to his apotheosis, and the archaic rudeness 
and hugeness of the work, wrought by the 
chisel of some primitive artist, imparted to 
his figure an air of barbaric majesty, a sav- 
age grandeur more appropriate, perhaps, to 
the character of this monster-slaying hero 
than would have been the work of a sculp- 
tor consummate in his art. 

On the right of the throne were Alcaeus, 
son of the hero and of Omphale; Ninus, 


3i6 king candaules 

Belus, Argon, the earlier kings of the dy- 
nasty of the Heracleidae, then all the line of 
intermediate kings, terminating with Ardys, 
Alyattes, Meles or Myrsus, father of Can- 
daules, and finally Candaules himself. 

All these personages, with their hair 
braided into little strings, their beards spi- 
rally twisted, their oblique eyes, angular 
attitudes, cramped and stiff gestures, seemed 
to own a sort of factitious life, due to the 
rays of the setting sun, and the ruddy hue 
which time lends to marble in warm cli- 
mates. The inscriptions in antique charac- 
ters, graven beside them after the manner of 
legends, enhanced still more the mysterious 
weirdness of the long procession of figures 
in strange barbarian garb. 

By a singular chance, which Gyges could 
not help observing, the statue of Candaules 
occupied the last available place at the right 
hand of Heracles; the dynastic cycle was 
closed, and in order to find a place for the 
descendants of Candaules it would be abso- 
lutely necessary to build a new portico and 
commence the formation of a new bas-relief. 

Candaules, whose arm still rested on the 


KING CANDAULES 


317 


shoulder of Gyges, walked slowly round the 
portico in silence. He seemed to hesitate 
to enter into the subject, and had altogether 
forgotten the pretext under which he had 
led the captain of his guards into that soli- 
tary place. 

“ What would you do, Gyges,” said Can- 
daules, at last breaking the silence which 
had been growing painful to both, ” if you 
were a diver, and should bring up from the 
green bosom of the ocean a pearl of incom- 
parable purity and lustre, and of worth so 
vast as to exhaust the richest treasures of 
the earth ? ’ ’ 

” I would inclose it,” answered Gyges, a 
little surprised at this brusque question, ” in 
a cedar box overlaid with plates of brass, 
and I would bury it under a detached rock 
in some desert place ; and from time to time, 
when I should feel assured that none could 
see me, I would go thither to contemplate 
my precious jewel and admire the colors of 
the sky mingling with its nacreous tints.” 

” And I,” replied Candaules, his eye illu- 
minated with enthusiasm, ” if I possessed 
so rich a gem, I would enshrine it in my 


3i8 


KING CANDAULES 


diadem, that I might exhibit it freely to the 
eyes of all men, in the pure light of the sun, 
that I might adorn myself with its splendor 
and smile with pride when I should hear it 
said: ‘ Never did king of Assyria or Baby- 
lon, never did Greek or Trinacrian tyrant 
possess so lustrous a pearl as Candaules, son 
of Myrsus and descendant of Heracles, King 
of Sardes and of Lydia! Compared with 
Candaules, Midas, who changed all things 
to gold, were only a mendicant as poor as 
Irus.’ ” 

Gyges listened with astonishment to this 
discourse of Candaules, and sought to pene- 
trate the hidden sense of these lyric divaga- 
tions. The king appeared to be in a state of 
extraordinary excitement : his eyes sparkled 
with enthusiasm ; a feverish rosiness tinted 
his cheeks; his dilated nostrils inhaled the 
air with unusual effort. 

“ Well, Gyges,*' continued Candaules, 
without appearing to notice the uneasiness 
of his favorite, “ I am that diver. Amid 
this dark ocean of humanity, wherein con- 
fusedly move so many defective or mis- 
shapen beings, so many forms incomplete or 


KING CANDAULES 


319 


degraded, so many types of bestial ugliness, 
wretched outlines of nature's experimental 
essays, I have found beauty, pure, radiant, 
without spot, without flaw, the ideal made 
real, the dream accomplished, a form which 
no painter or sculptor has ever been able to 
translate upon canvas or into marble — I have 
found Nyssia! " 

“ Although the queen has the timid mod- 
esty of the women of the Orient, and that 
no man save her husband has ever beheld 
her features. Fame, hundred-tongued and 
hundred-eared, has celebrated her praise 
throughout the world,” answered Gyges, 
respectfully inclining his head as he spoke. 

” Mere vague, insignificant rumors. They 
say of her, as of all women not actually ugly, 
that she is more beautiful than Aphrodite or 
Helen; but no person could form even the 
most remote idea of such perfection. In 
vain have I besought Nyssia to appear un- 
veiled at some public festival, some solemn 
sacrifice, or to show herself for an instant 
leaning over the royal terrace, bestowing 
upon her people the immense favor of one 
look, the prodigality of one profile view. 


320 


KING CANDAULES 


more generous than the goddesses who per- 
mit their worshippers to behold only pale 
simulacra of ivory or alabaster. She would 
never consent to that. Now there is one 
strange thing which I blush to acknowledge 
even to you, dear Gyges. Formerly I was 
jealous; I wished to conceal my amours from 
all eyes, no shadow was thick enough, no 
mystery sufficiently impenetrable. Now I 
can no longer recognize myself. I have the 
feelings neither of a lover nor a husband ; my 
love has melted in adoration like thin wax in 
a fiery brazier. All petty feelings of jeal- 
ousy or possession have vanished. No, the 
most finished work that heaven has ever 
given to earth, since the day that Prome- 
theus held the flame under the right breast 
of the statue of clay, cannot thus be kept 
hidden in the chill shadow of the gynaeceum. 
Were I to die, then the secret of this beauty 
would forever remain shrouded beneath the 
sombre draperies of widowhood ! I feel my- 
self culpable in its concealment, as though I 
had the sun in my house, and prevented it 
from illuminating the world. And when I 
think of those harmonious lines, those divine 


KING CANDAULES 


321 


contours which I dare scarcely touch with a 
timid kiss, I feel my heart ready to burst ; I 
wish that some friendly eye could share my 
happiness and, like a severe judge to whom 
a picture is shown, recognize after careful 
examination that it is irreproachable, and 
that the possessor has not been deceived by 
his enthusiasm. Yes, often do I feel myself 
tempted to tear off with rash hand those 
odious tissues, but Nyssia, in her fierce chas- 
tity, would never forgive me. And still I 
cannot alone endure such felicity. I must 
have a confidant for my ecstasies, an echo 
which will answer my cries of admiration, 
and it shall be none other than you.” 

Having uttered these words, Candaules 
brusquely turned and disappeared through 
a secret passage. Gyges, left thus alone, 
could not avoid noticing the peculiar con- 
course of events which seemed to place him 
always in Nyssia’s path. A chance had en- 
abled him to behold her beauty, though 
walled up from all other eyes. Among 
many princes and satraps she had chosen to 
espouse Candaules, the very king he served ; 
and through some strange caprice, which he 


21 


322 


KING CANDAULES 


could only regard as fateful, this king had 
just made him, Gyges, his confidant in re- 
gard to the mysterious creature whom none 
else had approached, and absolutely sought 
to complete the work of Boreas on the plain 
of Bactria ! Was not the hand of the gods 
visible in all these circumstances ? That 
spectre of beauty, whose veil seemed to be 
lifted slowly, a little at a time, as though 
to enkindle a flame within him, was it not 
leading him, without his having suspected it, 
toward the accomplishment of some mighty 
destiny ? Such were the questions which 
Gyges asked himself, but being unable to 
penetrate the obscurity of the future, he re- 
solved to await the course of events, and left 
the Court of Images, where the twilight 
darkness was commencing to pile itself up 
in all the angles, and to render the effigies 
of the ancestors of Candaules yet more and 
more weirdly menacing. 

Was it a mere effort of light, or was it 
rather an illusion produced by that vague 
uneasiness with which the boldest hearts are 
filled by the approach of night amid ancient 
monuments ? As he stepped across the 


KING CANDAULES 


323 


threshold Gyges fancied that he heard deep 
groans issue from the stone lips of the bas- 
reliefs, and it seemed to him that Heracles 
was making enormous efforts to loosen his 
granite club. 


CHAPTER III 

On the following day Candaules again 
took Gyges aside and continued the conver- 
sation begun under the portico of the Hera- 
cleidae. Having freed himself from the em- 
barrassment of broaching the subject, he 
freely unbosomed himself to his confidant; 
and had Nyssia been able to overhear him 
she might perhaps have been willing to par- 
don his conjugal indiscretions for the sake of 
his passionate eulogies of her charms. 

Gyges listened to all these bursts of praise 
with the slightly constrained air of one who 
is yet uncertain whether his interlocutor is 
not feigning an enthusiasm more ardent than 
he actually feels, in order to provoke a con- 
fidence naturally cautious to utter itself. 
Candaules at last said to him in a tone of 


324 


KING CANDAULES 


disappointment: “ I see, Gyges, that you 
do not believe me. You think I am boast- 
ing, or have allowed myself to be fascinated 
like some clumsy laborer by a robust coun- 
try girl on whose cheeks Hygeia has crushed 
the gross hues of health. No, by all the 
gods! I have collected within my home, 
like a living bouquet, the fairest flowers of 
Asia and of Greece. I know all that the art 
of sculptors and painters has produced since 
the time of Daedalus, whose statues walked 
and spoke. Linus, Orpheus, Homer, have 
taught me harmony and rhythm. I do not 
look about me with Love’s bandage blind- 
folding my eyes. I judge of all things 
coolly. The passions of youth never influ- 
ence my admiration, and when I am as with- 
ered, decrepit, wrinkled, as Tithonus in his 
swaddling bands, my opinion will be still the 
same. But I forgive your incredulity and 
want of sympathy. In order to understand 
me fully, it is necessary that you should see 
Nyssia in the radiant brilliancy of her shin- 
ing whiteness, free from jealous drapery, 
even as nature with her own hands moulded 
her in a lost moment of inspiration which 


KING CANDAULES 


325 


never can return. This evening I will hide 
you in a corner of the bridal chamber . . . 
you shall see her ! ” 

“ Sire, what do you ask of me ? ” returned 
the young warrior with respectful firmness. 

How shall I, from the depths of my dust, 
from the abyss of my nothingness, dare to 
raise my eyes to this sun of perfections, at 
the risk of remaining blind for the rest of 
my life, or being able to see naught but a 
dazzling spectre in the midst of darkness ? 
Have pity on your humble slave, and do not 
compel him to an action so contrary to the 
maxims of virtue. No man should look 
upon what does not belong to him. We 
know that the immortals always punish those 
who through imprudence or audacity sur- 
prise them in their divine nudity. Nyssia is 
the loveliest of all women ; you are the hap- 
piest of lovers and husbands. Heracles, 
your ancestor, never found in the course of 
his many conquests aught to compare with 
your queen. If you, the prince of whom 
even the most skilful artists seek judgment 
and counsel — if you find her incomparable, 
of what consequence can the opinion of an 


326 


KING CANDAULES 


obscure soldier like me be to you ? Aban- 
don, therefore, this fantasy, which I presume 
to say is unworthy of your royal majesty, 
and of which you would repent so soon as it 
had been satisfied.” 

“Listen, Gyges,” returned Candaules; 
“ I perceive that you suspect me; you think 
that I seek to put you to some proof, but 
by the ashes of that funeral pyre whence my 
ancestor arose a god, I swear to you that I 
speak frankly and without any after-purpose.” 

“ O Candaules, I doubt not of your good 
faith ; your passion is sincere, but perchance, 
after I should have obeyed you, you would 
conceive a deep aversion to me, and learn to 
hate me for not having more firmly resisted 
your will. You would seek to take back 
from these eyes, indiscreet through compul- 
sion, the image which you allowed them to 
glance upon in a moment of delirium ; and 
who knows but that you would condemn 
them to the eternal night of the tomb to 
punish them for remaining open at a mo- 
ment when they ought to have been closed.” 

“ Fear nothing; I pledge my royal word 
that no evil shall befall you.” 


KING CANDAULES 


327 


“ Pardon your slave if he still dares to 
offer some objection, even after such a prom- 
ise. Have you reflected that what you pro- 
pose to me is a violation of the sanctity of 
marriage, a species of visual adultery ? A 
woman often lays aside her modesty with 
her garments; and once violated by a look, 
without having actually ceased to be virtu- 
ous, she might deem that she had lost her 
flower of purity. You promise, indeed, to 
feel no resentment against me; but who can 
insure me against the wrath of Nyssia, she 
who is so reserved and chaste, so apprehen- 
sive, fierce, and virginal in her modesty that 
she might be deemed still ignorant of the 
laws of Hymen ? Should she ever learn of 
the sacrilege which I am about to render 
myself guilty of in deferring to my master's 
wishes, what punishment would she condemn 
me to suffer in expiation of such a crime ? 
Who could place me beyond the reach of 
her avenging anger ? " 

“ I did not know you were so wise and 
prudent,” said Candaules, with a slightly 
ironical smile; ” but such dangers are all 
imaginary, and I shall hide you in such a 


328 


KING CANDAULES 


way that Nyssia will never know she has 
been seen by any one except her royal hus- 
band.” 

Being unable to offer any further defence, 
Gyges made a sign of assent in token of com- 
plete submission to the king’s will. He had 
made all the resistance in his power, and 
thenceforward his conscience could feel at 
ease in regard to whatever might happen; 
besides, by any further opposition to the 
will of Candaules, he would have feared to 
oppose destiny itself, which seemed striving 
to bring him still nearer to Nyssia for some 
grim ulterior purpose into which it was not 
given to him to see further. 

Without actually being able to foresee 
any result, he beheld a thousand vague and 
shadowy images passing before his eyes. 
That subterranean love, so long crouched at 
the foot of his soul’s stairway, had climbed 
a few steps higher, guided by some fitful 
glimmer of hope. The weight of the impos- 
sible no longer pressed so heavily upon his 
breast, now that he believed himself aided 
by the gods. In truth, who would have 
dreamed that the much-boasted charms of 


KING CANDAULES 


329 


the daughter of Megabazus would ere long 
cease to own any mystery for Gyges ? 

“ Come, Gyges," said Candaules, taking 
him by the hand, " let us make profit of the 
time. Nyssia is walking in the garden with 
her women; let us look at the place, and 
plan our stratagems for this evening." 

The king took his confidant by the hand 
and led him along the winding ways which 
conducted to the nuptial apartment. The 
doors of the sleeping-room were made of 
cedar planks so perfectly put together that 
it was impossible to discover the joints. By 
dint of rubbing them with wool steeped in 
oil, the slaves had rendered the wood as pol- 
ished as marble. The brazen nails, with 
heads cut in facets, which studded them, 
had all the brilliancy of the purest gold. A 
complicated system of straps and metallic 
rings, whereof Candaules and his wife alone 
knew the combination, served to secure 
them, for in those heroic ages the lock- 
smith's art was yet in its infancy. 

Candaules unloosed the knots, made the 
rings slide back upon the thongs, raised with 
a handle which fitted into a mortise the bar 


330 


KING CANDAULES 


that fastened the door from within, and bid- 
ding Gyges place himself against the wall, 
turned back one of the folding doors upon 
him in such a way as to hide him completely ; 
yet the door did not fit so perfectly to its 
frame of oaken beams, all carefully polished 
and put up according to line by a skilful 
workman, that the young warrior could not 
obtain a distinct view of the chamber interior 
through the interstices contrived to give 
room for the free play of the hinges. 

Facing the entrance, the royal bed stood 
upon an estrade of several steps, covered 
with purple drapery. Columns of chased 
silver supported the entablature, all orna- 
mented with foliage wrought in relief, amid 
which Loves were sporting with dolphins, 
and heavy curtains embroidered with gold 
surrounded it like the folds of a tent. 

Upon the altar of the household gods were 
placed vases of precious metal, paterae enam- 
elled with flowers, double-handled cups, and 
all things needful for libations. 

Along the walls, which were faced with 
planks of cedar-wood, marvellously worked, 
at regular intervals stood tall statues of 


KING CANDAULES 


331 


black basalt in the constrained attitudes of 
Egyptian art, each sustaining in its hand a 
bronze torch into which a splinter of resin- 
ous wood had been fitted. 

An onyx lamp, suspended by a chain of 
silver, hung from that beam of the ceiling 
which is called the black beam, because more 
exposed than the others to the embrowning 
smoke. Every evening a slave carefully 
filled this lamp with odoriferous oil. 

Near the head of the bed, on a little col- 
umn, hung a trophy of arms, consisting of a 
visored helmet, a twofold buckler made of 
four bull’s hides and covered with plates of 
brass and tin, a two-edged sword, and sev- 
eral ashen javelins with brazen heads. 

The tunics and mantles of Candaules were 
hung upon wooden pegs. They comprised 
garments both simple and double; that is, 
capable of going twice around the body. A 
mantle of thrice-dyed purple, ornamented 
with embroidery representing a hunting 
scene wherein Laconian hounds were pursu- 
ing and tearing deer, and a tunic whereof 
the material, fine and delicate as the skin 
which envelops an onion, had all the sheen 


332 


KING CANDAULES 


of woven sunbeams, were especially notice- 
able. Opposite to the trophy stood an arm- 
chair inlaid with silver and ivory upon which 
Nyssia hung her garments. Its seat was 
covered with a leopard skin more eye-spotted 
than the body of Argus, and its foot-support 
was richly adorned with open-work carving. 

“ I am generally the first to retire,” ob- 
served Candaules to Gyges, ” and I always 
leave this door open as it is now. Nyssia, 
who has invariably some tapestry flower to 
finish, or some order to give her women, 
usually delays a little in joining me; but at 
last she comes, and slowly takes off, one by 
one, as though the effort cost her dearly, and 
lays upon that ivory chair all those draperies 
and tunics which by day envelop her like 
mummy bandages. From your hiding-place 
you will be able to follow all her graceful 
movements, admire her unrivalled charms, 
and judge for yourself whether Candaules 
be a young fool prone to vain boasting, or 
•whether he does not really possess the rich- 
est pearl of beauty that ever adorned a 
diadem.” 

” O King, I can well believe your words 


KING CANDAULES 


333 


without such a proof as this,” replied Gyges, 
stepping forth from his hiding-place. 

” When she has laid aside her garments,” 
continued Candaules, without heeding the 
exclamation of his confidant, ” she will come 
to lie down with me. You must take advan- 
tage of the moment to steal away, for in 
passing from the chair to the bed she turns 
her back to the door. Step lightly as though 
you were treading upon ears of ripe wheat; 
take heed that no grain of sand squeaks un- 
der your sandals; hold your breath, and re- 
tire as stealthily as possible. The vestibule 
is all in darkness, and the feeble rays of the 
only lamp which remains burning do not 
penetrate beyond the threshold of the cham- 
ber. It is therefore certain that Nyssia can- 
not possibly see you ; and to-morrow there 
will be some one in the world who can com- 
prehend my ecstasies, and will feel no longer 
astonished at my bursts of admiration. But 
see, the day is almost spent; the Sun will 
soon water his steeds in the Hesperian waves 
at the further end of the world, and beyond 
the Pillars erected by my ancestors. Return 
to your hiding-place, Gyges, and though the 


334 


KING CANDAULES 


hours of waiting may seem long, I can swear 
by Eros of the Golden Arrows that you will 
not regret having waited.” 

After this assurance Candaules left Gyges 
again hidden behind the door. The compul- 
sory quiet which the king’s young confidant 
found himself obliged to maintain left him 
ample leisure for thought. His situation 
was certainly a most extraordinary one. He 
had loved Nyssia as one loves a star. Con- 
vinced of the hopelessness of the undertak- 
ing, he had made no effort to approach her. 
And nevertheless, by a succession of ex- 
traordinary events he was about to obtain 
a knowledge of treasures reserved for lovers 
and husbands only. Not a word, not a 
glance had been exchanged between himself 
and Nyssia, who probably ignored the very 
existence of the one being for whom her 
beauty would so soon cease to be a mystery. 
Unknown to her whose modesty would have 
naught to sacrifice for you, how strange a 
situation! To love a woman in secret and 
find one’s self led by her husband to the 
threshold of the nuptial chamber, to have 
for guide to that treasure the very dragon 


KING CANDAULES 


335 


who should defend all approach to it, was 
there not in all this ample food for astonish- 
ment and wonder at the combination of 
events wrought by destiny ? 

In the midst of these reflections, he sud- 
denly heard the sound of footsteps on the 
pavement. It was only the slaves coming 
to replenish the oil in the lamp, throw fresh 
perfumes upon the coals of the klamklins^ 
and arrange the purple and saffron-tinted 
sheepskins which formed the royal bed. 

The hour approached, and Gyges felt his 
heart beat faster, and the pulsation of his 
arteries quicken. He even felt a strong im- 
pulse to steal away before the arrival of the 
queen, and, after averring subsequently to 
Candaules that he had remained, abandon 
himself confidently to the most extravagant 
eulogiums. He felt a strong repugnance 
(for, despite his somewhat free life, Gyges 
was not without delicacy) to take by stealth 
a favor for the free granting of which he 
would gladly have paid with his life. The 
husband's complicity rendered this theft 
more odious in a certain sense, and he would 
have preferred to owe to any other circum- 


336 


KING CANDAULES 


stance the happiness of beholding the mar- 
vel of Asia in her nocturnal toilet. Perhaps, 
indeed, the approach of danger, let us ac- 
knowledge as veracious historians, had no 
little to do with his virtuous scruples. Un- 
doubtedly Gyges did not lack courage. 
Mounted upon his war-chariot, with quiver 
rattling upon his shoulder, and bow in hand, 
he would have defied the most valiant war- 
riors; in the chase he would have attacked 
without fear the Calydon boar or the Ne- 
mean lion ; but — explain the enigma as you 
will — he trembled at the idea of looking at a 
beautiful woman through a chink in a door. 
No one possesses every kind of courage. He 
felt likewise that he could not behold Nyssia 
with impunity. It would be a decisive epoch 
in his life. Through having obtained but a 
momentary glimpse of her he had lost all 
peace of mind ; what, then, would be the re- 
sult of that which was about to take place ? 
Could life itself continue for him when to 
that divine head which fired his dreams 
should be added a charming body formed 
for the kisses of the immortals ? What 
would become of him should he find himself 


KING CANDAULES 


337 


unable thereafter to contain his passion in 
darkness and silence as he had done till that 
time ? Would he exhibit to the court of 
Lydia the ridiculous spectacle of an insane 
love, or would he strive by some extravagant 
action to bring down upon himself the dis- 
dainful pity of the queen ? Such a result 
was strongly probable, since the reason of 
Candaules himself, the legitimate possessor 
of Nyssia, had been unable to resist the ver- 
tigo caused by that superhuman beauty — he, 
the thoughtless young king who till then 
had laughed at love, and preferred pictures 
and statues before all things. These argu- 
ments were very rational but wholly useless, 
for at the same moment Candaules entered 
the chamber, and exclaimed in a low but 
distinct voice as he passed the door: 

“ Patience, my poor Gyges, Nyssia will 
soon come.” 

When he saw that he could no longer re- 
treat, Gyges, who was but a young man after 
all, forgot every other consideration, and no 
longer thought of aught save the happiness 
of feasting his eyes upon the charming spec- 
tacle which Candaules was about to offer 


23 


338 


KING CANDAULES 


him. One cannot demand from a captain 
of twenty-five the austerity of a hoary phi- 
losopher. 

At last a low whispering of raiment sweep- 
ing and trailing over marble, distinctly audi- 
ble in the deep silence of the night, an- 
nounced the approach of the queen. In 
effect it was she. With a step as cadenced 
and rhythmic as an ode, she crossed the 
threshold of the thalamus, and the wind of 
her veil with its floating folds almost touched 
the burning cheek of Gyges, who felt well- 
nigh on the point of fainting, and found him- 
self compelled to seek the support of the 
wall ; but soon recovering from the violence 
of his emotions, he approached the chink of 
the door, and took the most favorable posi- 
tion for enabling him to lose nothing of the 
scene whereof he was about to be an invisi- 
ble witness. 

Nyssia advanced to the ivory chair and 
commenced to detach the pins, terminated 
by hollow balls of gold, which fastened her 
veil upon her head; and Gyges from the 
depths of the shadow-filled angle where he 
stood concealed could examine at his ease 


KING CANDAULES 


339 


the proud and charming face of which he 
had before obtained only a hurried glimpse; 
that rounded neck, at once delicate and pow- 
erful, whereon Aphrodite had traced with the 
nail of her little finger those three faint lines 
which are still at this very day known as the 
“ necklace of Venus;” that white nape on 
whose alabaster surface little wild, rebellious 
curls were disporting and entwining them- 
selves ; those silver shoulders, half rising 
from the opening of the chlamys, like the 
moon’s disk emerging from an opaque cloud. 
Candaules, half reclining upon his cushions, 
gazed with fondness upon his wife, and 
thought to himself: “Now Gyges, who is 
so cold, so difficult to please, and so skepti- 
cal, must be already half convinced.” 

Opening a little coffer which stood on a 
table supported by one leg terminating in 
carven lion’s paws, the queen freed her 
beautiful arms from the weight of the brace- 
lets and jewelry wherewith they had been 
overburdened during the day — arms whose 
form and whiteness might well have enabled 
them to compare with those of Hera, sister 
and wife of Zeus, the lord of Olympus. Pre- 


340 


KING CANDAULES 


cious as were her jewels, they were assuredly 
not worth the spots which they concealed, 
and had Nyssia been a coquette, one might 
have well supposed that she only donned 
them in order that she should be entreated 
to take them off. The rings and chased 
work had left upon her skin, fine and tender 
as the interior pulp of a lily, light rosy im- 
prints, which she soon dissipated by rubbing 
them with her little taper-fingered hand, all 
rounded and slender at its extremities. 

Then with the movement of a dove trem- 
bling in the snow of its feathers, she shook 
her hair, which being no longer held by the 
golden pins, rolled down in languid spirals 
like hyacinth flowers over her back and bo- 
som. Thus she remained for a few moments 
ere reassembling the scattered curls and 
finally reuniting them into one mass. It 
was marvellous to watch the blond ringlets 
streaming like jets of liquid gold between 
the silver of her fingers; and her arms un- 
dulating like swans’ necks as they were 
arched above her head in the act of twisting 
and confining the natural bullion. If you 
have ever by chance examined one of those 


KING CANDAULES 


341 


beautiful Etruscan vases with red figures on 
a black ground, and decorated with one of 
those subjects which are designated under 
the title of “ Greek Toilette,” then you will 
have some idea of the grace of Nyssia in that 
attitude which, from the age of antiquity to 
our own era, has furnished such a multi- 
tude of happy designs for painters and 
statuaries. 

Having thus arranged her coiffure, she 
seated herself upon the edge of the ivory 
footstool and commenced to untie the little 
bands which fastened her buskins. We mod- 
erns, owing to our horrible system of foot- 
gear, which is hardly less absurd than the 
Chinese shoe, no longer know what a foot 
is. That of Nyssia was of a perfection rare 
even in Greece and antique Asia. The great 
toe, a little apart like the thumb of a bird, 
the other toes, slightly long, and all ranged 
in charming symmetry, the nails well shaped 
and brilliant as agates, the ankles well 
rounded and supple, the heel slightly tinted 
with a rosy hue — nothing was wanting to the 
perfection of the little member. The leg 
attached to this foot, and which gleamed 


342 


KING CANDAULES 


like polished marble under the lamp-light, 
was irreproachable in the purity of its out- 
lines and the grace of its curves. 

Gyges, lost in contemplation, though all 
the while fully comprehending the madness 
of Candaules, said to himself that had the 
gods bestowed such a treasure upon him he 
would have known how to keep it to him- 
self. 

“ Well, Nyssia, are you not coming to 
sleep with me ? " exclaimed Candaules, see- 
ing that the queen was not hurrying herself 
in the least, and feeling desirous to abridge 
the watch of Gyges. 

“Yes, my dear lord, I will soon be ready, “ 
answered Nyssia. 

And she detached the cameo which fast- 
ened the peplum upon her shoulder. There 
remained only the tunic to let fall. Gyges, 
behind the door, felt his veins hiss through 
his temples ; his heart beat so violently that 
he feared it must make itself heard in the 
chamber, and to repress its fierce pulsations 
he pressed his hand upon his bosom; and 
when Nyssia, with a movement of careless 
grace, unfastened the girdle of her tunic, he 


KING CANDAULES 


343 


thought his knees would give way beneath 
him. 

Nyssia — was it an instinctive presenti- 
ment, or was her skin, virginally pure from 
profane looks, so delicately magnetic in its 
susceptibility that it could feel the rays of a 
passionate eye though that eye was invisi- 
ble ? — Nyssia hesitated to strip herself of 
that tunic, the last rampart of her modesty. 
Twice or thrice her shoulders, her bosom, 
and bare arms shuddered with a nervous 
chill, as though they had been suddenly 
grazed by the wings of a nocturnal butter- 
fly, or as though an insolent lip had dared 
to touch them in the darkness. 

At last, seeming to nerve herself for a sud- 
den resolve, she doffed the tunic in its turn ; 
and the white poem of her divine body sud- 
denly appeared in all its splendor, like the 
statue of a goddess unveiled on the day of a 
temple's inauguration. Shuddering with 
pleasure the light glided and gloated over 
those exquisite forms, and covered them 
with timid kisses, profiting by an occasion, 
alas, rare indeed ! The rays scattered 
through the chamber, disdaining to illumi- 


344 


KING CANDAULES 


nate golden arms, jewelled clasps, or brazen 
tripods, all concentrated themselves upon 
Nyssia, and left all other objects in obscu- 
rity. Were we Greeks of the age of Pericles 
we might at our ease eulogize those beauti- 
ful serpentine lines, those polished flanks, 
those elegant curves, those breasts which 
might have served as moulds for the cup of 
Hebe; but modern prudery forbids such de- 
scriptions, for the pen cannot find pardon 
for what is permitted to the chisel ; and be- 
sides, there are some things which can be 
written of only in marble. 

Candaules smiled in proud satisfaction. 
With a rapid step, as though ashamed of 
being so beautiful, for she was only the 
daughter of a man and a woman, Nyssia ap- 
proached the bed, her arms folded upon her 
bosom; but with a sudden movement she 
turned round ere taking her place upon the 
couch beside her royal spouse, and beheld 
through the aperture of the door a gleaming 
eye flaming like the carbuncle of Oriental 
legend; for if it were false that she had a 
double pupil, and that she possessed the 
stone which is found in the heads of dragons. 


KING CANDAULES 


345 


it was at least true that her green glance 
penetrated darkness like the glaucous eye of 
the cat and tiger. 

A cry, like that of a fawn who receives an 
arrow in her flank while tranquilly dreaming 
among the leafy shadows, was on the point 
of bursting from her lips, yet she found 
strength to control herself, and lay down be- 
side Candaules, cold as a serpent, with the 
violets of death upon her cheeks and lips. 
Not a muscle of her limbs quivered, not a 
fibre of her body palpitated, and soon her 
slow, regular breathing seemed to indicate 
that Morpheus had distilled his poppy juice 
upon her eyelids. 

She had divined and comprehended all. 


CHAPTER IV 

Gyges, trembling and distracted with pas- 
sion, had retired, following exactly the in- 
structions of Candaules; and if Nyssia, 
through some unfortunate chance, had not 
turned her head ere taking her place upon 
the couch, and perceived him in the act of 


346 


KING CANDAULES 


taking flight, doubtless she would have re- 
mained forever unconscious of the outrage 
done to her charms by a husband more pas- 
sionate than scrupulous. 

Accustomed to the winding corridors of 
the palace, the young warrior had no diffi- 
culty in finding his way out. He passed 
through the city at a reckless pace like a 
madman escaped from Anticyra, and by 
making himself known to the sentinels who 
guarded the ramparts, he had the gates 
opened for him and gained the fields be- 
yond. His brain burned, his cheeks flamed 
as with the fires of fever; his breath came 
hotly panting through his lips; he flung 
himself down upon the meadow-sod humid 
with the tears of the night; and at last hear- 
ing in the darkness, through the thick grass 
and water-plants, the silvery respiration of a 
Naiad, he dragged himself to the spring, 
plunged his hands and arms into the crystal 
flood, bathed his face, and drank several 
mouthfuls of the water in the hope to cool 
the ardor which was devouring him. Any 
one who could have seen him thus hopelessly 
bending over the spring in the feeble star- 


KING CANDAULES 


347 


light would have taken him for Narcissus 
pursuing his own shadow; but it was not of 
himself assuredly that Gyges was enamoured. 

The rapid apparition of Nyssia had dazzled 
his eyes like the keen zigzag of a lightning- 
flash. He beheld her floating before him in 
a luminous whirlwind, and felt that never 
through all his life could he banish that im- 
age from his vision. His love had grown to 
vastness; its flower had suddenly burst, like 
those plants which open their blossoms with 
a clap of thunder. To master his passion 
were henceforth a thing impossible : as well 
counsel the empurpled waves which Poseidon 
lifts with his trident to lie tranquilly in their 
bed of sand and cease to foam upon the 
rocks of the shore. Gyges was no longer 
master of himself, and he felt a miserable 
despair, as of a man riding in a chariot, who 
finds his terrified and uncontrollable horses 
rushing with all the speed of a furious gal- 
lop toward some rock-bristling precipice. A 
hundred thousand projects, each wilder than 
the last, whirled confusedly through his 
brain. He blasphemed Destiny, he cursed 
his mother for having given him life, and the 


348 


KING CANDAULES 


gods that they had not caused him to be 
born to a throne, for then he might have 
been able to espouse the daughter of the 
satrap. 

A frightful agony gnawed at his heart ; he 
was jealous of the king. From the moment 
of the tunic’s fall at the feet of Nyssia, like 
the flight of a white dove alighting upon a 
meadow, it had seemed to him that she be- 
longed to him ; he deemed himself despoiled 
of his wealth by Candaules. In all his amor- 
ous reveries he had never until then thought 
of the husband ; he had thought of the queen 
only as of a pure abstraction, without repre- 
senting to himself in fancy all those intimate 
details of conjugal familiarity, so poignant, 
so bitter for those who love a woman in the 
power of another. Now he had beheld Nys- 
sia’s blonde head bending like a blossom be- 
side the dark head of Candaules. The very 
thought of it had inflamed his anger to the 
highest degree, although a moment’s reflec- 
tion should have convinced him that things 
could not have come to pass otherwise, and 
he felt growing within him a most unjust 
hatred against his master. The act of hav- 


KING CANDAULES 


349 


ing compelled his presence at the queen’s 
dishabille seemed to him a barbarous irony, 
an odious refinement of cruelty, for he did 
not remember that his love for her could not 
have been known by the king, who had 
sought in him only a confidant of easy mor- 
als and a connoisseur in beauty. That which 
he ought to have regarded as a great favor 
affected him like a mortal injury for which 
he was meditating vengeance. While think- 
ing that to-morrow the same scene of which 
he had been a mute and invisible witness 
would infallibly renew itself, his tongue clove 
to his palate, his forehead became imbeaded 
with drops of cold sweat, and his hand con- 
vulsively grasped the hilt of his great double- 
edged sword. 

Nevertheless, thanks to the freshness of 
the night, that excellent counsellor, he be- 
came a little calmer, and returned to Sardes 
before the morning light had become bright 
enough to enable a few early rising citizens 
and slaves to notice the pallor of his brow 
and the disorder of his apparel. He betook 
himself to his regular post at the palace, well 
suspecting that Candaules would shortly send 


350 


KING CANDAULES 


for him ; and, however violent the agitation 
of his feelings, he felt he was not powerful 
enough to brave the anger of the king, and 
could in no way escape submitting again to 
this rdle of confidant, which could thence- 
forth only inspire him with horror. Having 
arrived at the palace, he seated himself upon 
the steps of the cypress-panelled vestibule, 
leaned his back against a column, and, un- 
der the pretext of being fatigued by the long 
vigil under arms, he covered his head with 
his mantle and feigned sleep to avoid an- 
swering the questions of the other guards. 

If the night had been terrible to Gyges, it 
had not been less so to Nyssia, as she never 
for an instant doubted that he had been pur- 
posely hidden there by Candaules. The 
king’s persistency in begging her not to veil 
so austerely a face which the gods had made 
for the admiration of men, his evident vex- 
ation upon her refusal to appear in Greek 
costume at the sacrifices and public solemni- 
ties, his unsparing raillery at what he termed 
her barbarian shyness, all tended to convince 
her that the young Heracleid had sought to 
admit some one into those mysteries which 


KING CANDAULES 


351 


should remain secret to all, for without his 
encouragement no man could have dared to 
risk himself in an undertaking the discovery 
of which would have resulted in the punish- 
ment of a speedy death. 

How slowly did the black hours seem to 
her to pass! How anxiously did she await 
the coming of dawn to mingle its bluish tints 
with the yellow gleams of the almost ex- 
hausted lamp ! It seemed to her that Apollo 
would never mount his chariot again, and 
that some invisible hand was sustaining the 
sand of the hour-glass in air. Though brief 
as any other, that night seemed to her like 
the Cimmerian nights, six long months of 
darkness. 

While it lasted she lay motionless and 
rigid at full length on the very edge of her 
couch in dread of being touched by Can- 
daules. If she had not up to that night felt 
a very strong love for the son of Myrsus, she 
had, at least, ever exhibited toward him that 
grave and serene tenderness which every vir- 
tuous woman entertains for her husband, 
although the altogether Greek freedom of 
his morals frequently displeased her, and 


352 


KING CANDAULES 


though he entertained ideas at variance with 
her own in regard to modesty; but after 
such an affront she could only feel the chilli- 
est hatred and most icy contempt for him ; 
she would have preferred even death to one 
of his caresses. Such an outrage it was im- 
possible to forgive, for among the barbarians, 
and above all among the Persians and Bac- 
trians, it was held a great disgrace, not for 
women only, but even for men, to be seen 
without their garments. 

At length Candaules arose, and Nyssia, 
awaking from her simulated sleep, hurried 
from that chamber now profaned in her eyes 
as though it had served for the nocturnal 
orgies of Bacchantes and courtesans. It was 
agony for her to breathe that impure air any 
longer, and that she might freely give her- 
self up to her grief she took refuge in the 
upper apartments reserved for the women, 
summoned her slaves by clapping her hands, 
and poured ewers of water over her shoul- 
ders, her bosom, and her whole body, as 
though hoping by this species of lustral ablu- 
tion to efface the soil imprinted by the eyes 
of Gyges. She would have voluntarily torn. 


KING CANDAULES 


353 


as it were, from her body that skin upon 
which the rays shot from a burning pupil 
seemed to have left their traces. Taking 
from the hands of her waiting women the 
thick downy materials which served to drink 
up the last pearls of the bath, she wiped her- 
self with such violence that a slight purple 
cloud rose to the spots she had rubbed. 

“ In vain,” she exclaimed, letting the 
damp tissues fall, and dismissing her attend- 
ants — ” in vain would I pour over myself all 
the waters of all the springs and the rivers ; 
the ocean with all its bitter gulfs could not 
purify me. Such a stain may be washed 
out only with blood. Oh, that look, that 
look! It has incrusted itself upon me; it 
clasps me, covers me, burns me like the tunic 
dipped in the blood of Nessus; I feel it be- 
neath my draperies^ like an envenomed tissue 
which nothing can detach from my body! 
Now, indeed, would I vainly pile garments 
upon garments, select materials the least 
transparent, and the thickest of mantles. I 
would none the less bear upon my naked 
flesh this infamous robe woven by one adul- 
terous and lascivious glance. Vainly, since 


23 


354 


KING CANDAULES 


the hour when I issued from the chaste 
womb of my mother, have I been brought 
up in private, enveloped like Isis, the Egyp- 
tian goddess, with a veil of which none might 
have lifted the hem without paying for his 
audacity with his life. In vain have I re- 
mained guarded from all evil desires, from 
all profane imaginings, unknown of men, 
virgin as the snow on which the eagle himself 
could not imprint the seal of his talons, so 
loftily does the mountain which it covers lift 
its head in the pure and icy air. The de- 
praved caprice of a Lydian Greek has suf- 
ficed to make me lose in a single instant, 
without any guilt of mine, all the fruit of 
long years of precaution and reserve. Inno- 
cent and dishonored, hidden from all yet 
made public to all . . . this is the lot to 
which Candaules has condemned me. Who 
can assure me that, at this very moment, 
Gyges is not in the act of discoursing upon 
my charms with some soldiers at the very 
threshold of the palace ? Oh shame ! Oh 
infamy! Two men have beheld me naked 
and yet at this instant enjoy the sweet light 
of the sun I In what does Nyssia now differ 


KING CANDAULES 


355 


from the most shameless hetaira, from the 
vilest of courtesans ? This body which I 
have striven to render worthy of being the 
habitation of a pure and noble soul, serves 
for a theme of conversation ; it is talked of 
like some lascivious idol brought from Sicyon 
or from Corinth ; it is commended or found 
fault with. The shoulder is perfect, the arm 
is charming, perhaps a little thin — what know 
I ? All the blood of my heart leaps to my 
cheeks at such a thought. Oh beauty, fatal 
gift of the gods! why am I not the wife of 
some poor mountain goatherd of innocent 
and simple habits ? He would not have sub- 
orned a goatherd like himself at the thresh- 
old of his cabin to profane his humble hap- 
piness ! My lean figure, my unkempt hair, 
my complexion faded by the burning sun, 
would then have saved me from so gross an 
insult, and my honest homeliness would not 
have been compelled to blush. How shall 
I dare, after the scene of this night, to pass 
before those men, proudly erect under the 
folds of a tunic which has no longer aught 
to hide from either of them. I should drop 
dead with shame upon the pavement. Can- 


356 


KING CANDAULES 


daules, Candaules, I was at least entitled to 
more respect from you, and there was noth- 
ing in my conduct which could have pro- 
voked such an outrage. Was I one of those 
ones whose arms forever cling like ivy to 
their husbands’ necks, and who seem more 
like slaves bought with money for a master’s 
pleasure than free-born women of noble 
blood ? Have I ever after a repast sung 
amorous hymns accompanying myself upon 
the lyre, with wine-moist lips, naked shoul- 
ders, and a wreath of roses about my hair, 
or given you cause, by any immodest action, 
to treat me like a mistress whom one shows 
after a banquet to his companions in de- 
bauch ? ” 

While Nyssiawas thus buried in her grief, 
great tears overflowed from her eyes like 
rain-drops from the azure chalice of a lotus- 
flower after some storm, and rolling down 
her pale cheeks fell upon her fair forlorn 
hands, languishingly open, like roses whose 
leaves are half-shed, for no order came from 
the brain to give them activity. The atti- 
tude of Niobe, beholding her fourteenth 
child succumb beneath the arrows of Apollo 


KING CANDAULES 


357 


and Diana, was not more sadly despairing, 
but soon starting from this state of prostra- 
tion, she rolled herself upon the floor, rent 
her garments, covered her beautiful dishev- 
elled hair with ashes, tore her bosom and 
cheeks with her nails amid convulsive sobs, 
and abandoned herself to all the excesses of 
Oriental grief, the more violently that she 
had been forced so long to contain her in- 
dignation, shame, pangs of wounded dignity, 
and all the agony that convulsed her soul, 
for the pride of her whole life had been 
broken, and the idea that she had nothing 
wherewith to reproach herself afforded her no 
consolation. As a poet has said, only the in- 
nocent know remorse. She was repenting 
of the crime which another had committed. 

Nevertheless she made an effort to recover 
herself, ordered the baskets filled with wools 
of different colors, and the spindles wrapped 
with flax to be brought to her, and distrib- 
uted the work to her women as she had been 
accustomed to do ; but she thought she no- 
ticed that the slaves looked at her in a very 
peculiar way, and had ceased to entertain 
the same timid respect for her as before. 


358 


KING CANDAULES 


Her voice no longer rang with the same as- 
surance; there was something humble and 
furtive in her demeanor; she felt herself in- 
teriorly fallen. 

Doubtless her scruples were exaggerated, 
and her virtue had received no stain from 
the folly of Candaules; but ideas imbibed 
with a mother’s milk obtain irresistible sway, 
and the modesty of the body is carried by 
Oriental nations to an extent almost incom- 
prehensible to Occidental races. When a 
man desired to speak to Nyssia in the palace 
of Megabazus at Bactria, he was obliged to 
do so keeping his eyes fixed upon the ground, 
and two eunuchs stood beside him, poniard 
in hand, ready to plunge their keen blades 
through his heart should he dare lift his head 
to look at the princess, notwithstanding that 
her face was veiled. You may readily con- 
ceive, therefore, how deadly an injury the 
action of Candaules would seem to a woman 
thus brought up, while any other would 
doubtless have considered it only a culpable 
frivolity. Thus the idea of vengeance had 
instantly presented itself to Nyssia, and had 
given her sufficient self-control to strangle 


KING CANDAULES 


359 


the cry of her offended modesty ere it reached 
her lips, at the moment when, turning her 
head, she beheld the burning eyes of Gyges 
flaming through the darkness. She must 
have possessed the courage of the warrior in 
ambush, who, wounded by a random dart, 
utters no syllable of pain through fear of be- 
traying himself behind his shelter of foliage 
or river-reeds, and in silence permits his 
blood to stripe his flesh with long red lines. 
Had she not withheld that first impulse to 
cry aloud, Candaules, alarmed and fore- 
warned, would have kept upon his guard, 
which must have rendered it more difficult, 
if not impossible, to carry out her purpose. 

Nevertheless, as yet she had conceived no 
definite plan, but she had resolved that the 
insult done to her honor should be fully ex- 
piated. At first she had thought of killing 
Candaules herself while he slept, with the 
sword hung at the bedside. But she re- 
coiled from the thought of dipping her beau- 
tiful hands in blood; she feared lest she 
might miss her blow ; and, with all her bit- 
ter anger, she hesitated at so violent and un- 
womanly an act. 


36 o 


KING CANDAULES 


Suddenly she appeared to have decided 
upon some project. She summoned Statira, 
one of the waiting women who had come 
with her from Bactria, and in whom she 
placed much confidence, and whispered a 
few words close to her ear in a very low 
voice, although there were no other persons 
in the room, as if she feared that even the 
walls might hear her. 

Statira bowed low, and immediately left 
the apartment. 

Like all persons who are actually menaced 
by some great peril, Candaules presumed 
himself perfectly secure. He was certain 
that Gyges had stolen away unperceived, 
and he thought only upon the delight of 
conversing with him about the unrivalled at- 
tractions of his wife. 

So he caused him to be summoned, and 
conducted him to the Court of the Hera- 
cleidae. 

“ Well, Gyges,” he said to him with laugh- 
ing mien, ” I did not deceive you when I 
assured you that you would not regret hav- 
ing passed a few hours behind that blessed 
door. Am I right ? Do you know of any 


KING CANDAULES 


361 


living woman more beautiful than the 
queen ? If you know of any superior to 
her, tell me so frankly, and go bear her in 
my name this string of pearls, the symbol 
of power.” 

” Sire,” replied Gyges in a voice trem- 
bling with emotion, ” no human creature is 
worthy to compare with Nyssia. It is not 
the pearl fillet of queens which should adorn 
her brows, but only the starry crown of the 
immortals.” 

” I well knew that your ice must melt at 
last in the fires of that sun. Now can you 
comprehend my passion, my delirium, my 
mad desires ? Is it not true, Gyges, that 
the heart of a man is not great enough to 
contain such a love ? It must overflow and 
diffuse itself.” 

A hot blush overspread the cheeks of 
Gyges, who now but too well comprehended 
the admiration of Candaules. 

The king noticed it, and said, with a man- 
ner half smiling, half serious: 

” My poor friend, do not commit the folly 
of becoming enamoured of Nyssia; you 
would lose your pains. It is a statue which 


362 


KING CANDAULES 


I have enabled you to see, not a woman. I 
have allowed you to read some stanzas of a 
beautiful poem, whereof I alone possess 
the manuscript, merely for the purpose of 
having your opinion; that is all.” 

” You have no need, sire, to remind me 
of my nothingness. Sometimes the hum- 
blest slave is visited in his slumbers by some 
radiant and lovely vision, with ideal forms, 
nacreous flesh, ambrosial hair. I — I have 
dreamed with open eyes; you are the god 
who sent me that dream.” 

” Now,” continued the king, ” it will 
scarcely be necessary for me to enjoin silence 
upon you. If you do not keep a seal upon 
your lips you might learn to your cost that 
Nyssia is not as good as she is beautiful.” 

The king waved his hand in token of fare- 
well to his confidant, and retired for the pur- 
pose of inspecting an antique bed sculptured 
by Ikmalius, a celebrated artisan, which had 
been offered him for purchase. 

Candaules had scarcely disappeared when 
a woman, wrapped in a long mantle so as to 
leave but one of her eyes exposed, after the 
fashion of the barbarians, came forth from 


KING CANDAULES 


363 


the shadow of a column behind which she 
had kept herself hidden during the conver- 
sation of the king and his favorite, walked 
straight to Gyges, placed her finger upon his 
shoulder, and made a sign to him to follow 
her. 


CHAPTER V 

Statira, followed by Gyges, paused be- 
fore a little door, of which she raised the 
latch by pulling a silver ring attached to a 
leathern strap, and commenced to ascend a 
stairway with rather high steps contrived in 
the thickness of the wall. At the head of 
the stairway was a second door, which she 
opened with a key wrought of ivory and 
brass. As soon as Gyges entered she dis- 
appeared without any further explanation in 
regard to what was expected of him. 

The curiosity of Gyges was mingled with 
uneasiness. He could form no idea as to 
the significance of this mysterious message. 
He had a vague fancy that he could recog- 
nize in the silent Iris one of Nyssia’s women : 
and the way by which she had made him fol- 


364 


KING CANDAULES 


low her led to the queen's apartments. He 
asked himself in terror whether he had been 
perceived in his hiding-place or betrayed by 
Candaules, for both suppositions seemed 
probable. 

At the idea that Nyssia knew all, he felt 
his face bedewed with a sweat alternately 
burning and icy. He sought to fly, but the 
door had been fastened upon him by Statira, 
and all escape was cut off ; then he advanced 
into the chamber, which was shadowed by 
heavy purple hangings, and found himself 
face to face with Nyssia. He thought he 
beheld a statue rise before him, such was 
her pallor. The hues of life had abandoned 
her face ; a feeble rose tint alone animated 
her lips; on her tender temples a few almost 
imperceptible veins intercrossed their azure 
network ; tears had swollen her eyelids, and 
left shining furrows upon the down of her 
cheeks; the chrysoprase tints of her eyes 
had lost their intensity. She was even more 
beautiful and touching thus. Sorrow had 
given soul to her marmorean beauty. 

Her disordered robe, scarcely fastened to 
her shoulders, left visible her beautiful bare 


KING CANDAULES 


36s 


arms, her throat, and the commencement of 
her death-white bosom. Like a warrior van- 
quished in his first conflict, her beauty had 
laid down its arms. Of what use to her 
would have been the draperies which conceal 
form, the tunics with their carefully fastened 
folds ? Did not Gyges know her ? Where- 
fore defend what has been lost in advance ? 

She walked straight to Gyges, and fixing 
upon him an imperial look, clear and com- 
manding, said to him, in a quick, abrupt 
voice : 

“ Do not lie; seek no vain subterfuges; 
have at least the dignity and courage of your 
crime. I know all ; I saw you! Not a word 
of excuse. I would not listen to it. Can- 
daules himself concealed you behind the 
door. Is it not so the thing happened ? 
And you fancy, doubtless, that it is all over ? 
Unhappily I am not a Greek woman, pliant 
to the whims of artists and voluptuaries. 
Nyssia will not serve for any one’s toy. 
There are now two men, one of whom is a 
man too much upon the earth. He must 
disappear from it! Unless he dies, I cannot 
live. It will be either you or Candaules. I 


366 


KING CANDAULES 


leave you master of the choice. Kill him, 
avenge me, and win by that murder both 
my hand and the throne of Lydia, or else 
shall a prompt death henceforth prevent you 
from beholding, through a cowardly com- 
plaisance, what you have not the right to 
look upon. He who commanded is more 
culpable than he who has only obeyed ; and, 
moreover, should you become my husband, 
no one will have ever seen me without hav- 
ing the right to do so. But make your de- 
cision at once, for two of those four eyes in 
which my nudity has reflected itself must 
before this very evening be forever extin- 
guished.” 

This strange alternative, proposed with a 
terrible coolness, with an immutable resolu- 
tion, so utterly surprised Gyges, who was 
expecting reproaches, menaces, and a vio- 
lent scene, that he remained for several min- 
utes without color and without voice, livid 
as a shade on the shores of the black rivers 
of hell. 

“I! to dip my hands in the blood of my 
master! Is it indeed you, O Queen, who 
demand of me so great a penalty ? I com- 


KING CANDAULES 


367 


prehend all your anger, I feel it to be just, 
and it was not my fault that this outrage 
took place; but you know that kings are 
mighty, they descend from a divine race. 
Our destinies repose on their august knees; 
and it is not we, feeble mortals, who may 
hesitate at their commands. Their will over- 
throws our refusal, as a dyke is swept away 
by a torrent. By your feet that I kiss, by 
the hem of your robe which I touch as a 
suppliant, be clement! Forget this injury, 
which is known to none, and which shall re- 
main eternally buried in darkness and silence ! 
Candaules worships you, admires you, and 
his fault springs only from an excess of love. ” 
“ Were you addressing a sphinx of granite 
in the arid sands of Egypt, you would have 
more chance of melting her. The winged 
words might fly uninterruptedly from your 
lips for a whole olympiad ; you could not 
move my resolution in the slightest. A 
heart of brass dwells in this marble breast of 
mine. Die or kill! When the sunbeam 
which has passed through the curtains shall 
touch the foot of this table let your choice 
have been made. I wait.” 


368 


KING CANDAULES 


And Nyssia crossed her arms upon her 
breast in an attitude replete with sombre 
majesty. 

To behold her standing erect, motionless 
and pale, her eyes fixed, her brows con- 
tracted, her hair in disorder, her foot firmly 
placed upon the pavement, one would have 
taken her for Nemesis descended from her 
griffin, and awaiting the hour to smite a 
guilty one. 

“ The shadowy depths of Hades are vis- 
ited by none with pleasure,” answered 
Gyges. ” It is sweet to enjoy the pure light 
of day ; and the heroes themselves who dwell 
in the Fortunate Isles would gladly return 
to their native land. Each man has the in- 
stinct of self-preservation, and since blood 
must flow, let it be rather from the veins of 
another than from mine.” 

To these sentiments, avowed by Gyges 
with antique frankness, were added others 
more noble whereof he did not speak. He 
was desperately in love with Nyssia and jeal- 
ous of Candaules. It was not, therefore, 
the fear of death alone that had induced him 
to undertake this bloody task. The thought 


KING CANDAULES 


369 


of leaving Candaules in free possession of 
Nyssia was insupportable to him ; and, more- 
over, the vertigo of fatality had seized him. 
By a succession of irregular and terrible 
events he beheld himself hurried toward the 
realization of his dreams; a mighty wave 
had lifted him and borne him on in despite 
of his efforts ; Nyssia herself was extending 
her hand to him, to help him to ascend the 
steps of the royal throne. All this had 
caused him to forget that Candaules was his 
master and his benefactor; for none can flee 
from Fate, and Necessity walks on with nails 
in one hand and whip in the other, to stop 
your advance or to urge you forward. 

“ It is well," replied Nyssia; " here is the 
means of execution." And she drew from 
her bosom a Bactrian poniard, with a jade 
handle enriched with inlaid circles of white 
gold. " This blade is not made of brass, 
but with iron difficult to work, tempered in 
flame and water, so that Hephaistos himself 
could not forge one more keenly pointed or 
finely edged. It would pierce, like thin 
papyrus, metal cuirasses and bucklers of 
dragon’s skin. 


24 


370 


KING CANDAULES 


‘ ‘ The time, ’ ’ she continued with the same 
icy coolness, “ shall be while he slumbers. 
Let him sleep and wake no more! ” 

Her accomplice, Gyges, hearkened to her 
words with stupefaction, for he had never 
thought he could find such resolution in a 
woman who could not bring herself to lift 
her veil. 

“ The ambuscade shall be laid in the very 
same place where the infamous one concealed 
you in order to expose me to your gaze. At 
the approach of night I shall turn back one 
of the folding doors upon you, undress my- 
self, lie down, and when he shall be asleep 
I will give you a signal. Above all things, 
let there be no hesitancy, no feebleness ; and 
take heed that your hand does not tremble 
when the moment shall have come! And 
now, for fear lest you might change your 
mind, I propose to make sure of your per- 
son until the fatal hour. You might at- 
tempt to escape, to forewarn your master. 
Do not think to do so." 

Nyssia whistled in a peculiar way, and im- 
mediately from behind a Persian tapestry 
embroidered with flowers, there appeared 


KING CANDAULES 


371 


four monsters, swarthy, clad in robes diag- 
onally striped, which left visible arms mus- 
cled and gnarled as trunks of oaks. Their 
thick pouting lips, the gold rings which they 
wore through the partition of their nostrils, 
their great teeth sharp as the fangs of wolves, 
the expression of stupid servility on their 
faces, rendered them hideous to behold. 

The queen pronounced some words in a 
language unknown to Gyges, doubtless in 
Bactrian, and the four slaves rushed upon 
the young man, seized him, and carried him 
away, even as a nurse might carry off a child 
in the fold of her robe. 

Now what were Nyssia’s real thoughts ? 
Had she, indeed, noticed Gyges at the time 
of her meeting with him near Bactria, and 
preserved some memory of the young cap- 
tain in one of those secret recesses of the 
heart where even the most virtuous women 
always have something buried ? Was the 
desire to avenge her modesty goaded by 
some other unacknowledged desire ? And 
if Gyges had not been the handsomest young 
man in all Asia would she have evinced the 
same ardor in punishing Candaules for hav- 


372 


KING CANDAULES 


ing outraged the sanctity of marriage ? That 
is a delicate question to resolve, especially 
after a lapse of three thousand years; and 
although we have consulted Herodotus, 
Hephaestion, Plato, Dositheus, Archilochus 
of Paros, Hesychius of Miletus, Ptolomoeus, 
Euphorion, and all who have spoken either 
at length or in only a few words concerning 
Candaules, Nyssia, and Gyges, we have been 
unable to arrive at any definite conclusion. 
To pursue so fleeting a shadow through so 
many centuries, under the ruins of so many 
crumbled empires, under the dust of de- 
parted nations, is a work of extreme diffi- 
culty, not to say impossibility. 

At all events, Nyssia’s resolution was im- 
placably taken ; this murder appeared to her 
in the light of the accomplishment of a 
sacred duty. Among the barbarian nations 
every man who has surprised a woman in 
her nakedness is put to death. The queen 
believed herself exercising her right; only 
inasmuch as the injury had been secret, she 
was doing herself justice as best she could. 
The passive accomplice would become the 
executioner of the other, and the punish- 


KING CANDAULES 


373 


ment would thus spring from the crime it- 
self. The hand would chastise the head. 

The olive-tinted monsters shut Gyges up 
in an obscure portion of the palace, whence 
it was impossible that he could escape, or 
that his cries could be heard. 

He passed the remainder of the day there 
in a state of cruel anxiety, accusing the 
hours of being lame, and again of walking 
too speedily. The crime which he was 
about to commit, although he was only, in 
some sort, the instrument of it, and though 
he was only yielding to an irresistible influ- 
ence, presented itself to his mind in the 
most sombre colors. If the blow should 
miss through one of those circumstances 
which none could foresee ? If the people 
of Sardes should revolt and seek to avenge 
the death of the king ? Such were the very 
sensible though useless reflections which 
Gyges made while waiting to be taken from 
his prison and led to the place whence he 
could only depart to strike his master. 

At last the night unfolded her starry robe 
in the sky, and its shadow fell upon the city 
and the palace. A light footstep became 


374 


KING CANDAULES 


audible^ a veiled woman entered the room and 
conducted him through the obscure corridors 
and multiplied mazes of the royal edifice with 
as much confidence as thv^ugh she had been 
preceded by a slave bearing a lamp or a torch. 

The hand which held that of Gyges was 
cold, soft, and small; nevertheless those 
slender fingers clasped it with a bruising 
force, as the fingers of some statue of brass 
animated by a prodigy would have done. 
The rigidity of an inflexible will betrayed 
itself in that ever-equal pressure as of a vise 
— a pressure which no hesitation of head or 
heart came to vary. Gyges, conquered, sub- 
jugated, crushed, yielded to that imperious 
traction, as though he were borne along by 
the mighty arm of Fate. 

Alas ! it was not thus he had wished to 
touch for the first time that fair royal hand, 
which had presented the poniard to him, and 
was leading him to murder, for it was Nyssia 
herself who had come for Gyges, to conceal 
him in the place of ambuscade. 

No word was exchanged between the sin- 
ister couple on the way from the prison to 
the nuptial chamber. 


KING CANDAULES 


375 


The queen unfastened the thongs, raised 
the bar of the entrance, and placed Gyges 
behind the folding door as Candaules had 
done the evening previous. This repetition 
of the same acts, with so different a purpose, 
had something of a lugubrious and fatal 
character. Vengeance, this time, had placed 
her foot upon every track left by the insult. 
The chastisement and the crime alike fol- 
lowed the same path. Yesterday it was the 
turn of Candaules, to-day it was that of 
Nyssia; and Gyges, accomplice in the in- 
jury, was also accomplice in the penalty. 
He had served the king to dishonor the 
queen ; he would serve the queen to kill the 
king, equally exposed by the vices of the 
one and the virtues of the other. 

The daughter of Megabazus seemed to 
feel a savage joy, a ferocious pleasure, in 
employing only the same means chosen by 
the Lydian king, and turning to account 
for the murder those very precautions which 
had been adopted for voluptuous fantasy. 

“ You will again this evening see me take 
off these garments which are so displeasing 
to Candaules. This spectacle should be- 


376 


KING CANDAULES 


come wearisome to you,” said the queen in 
accents of bitter irony, as she stood on the 
threshold of the chamber; ” you will end by 
finding me ugly.” And a sardonic, forced 
laugh momentarily curled her pale mouth ; 
then, regaining her impassible severity of 
mien, she continued: ” Do not imagine you 
will be able to steal away this time as you 
did before; you know my sight is piercing. 
At the slightest movement on your part I 
shall awake Candaules; and you know that 
it will not be easy for you to explain what 
you are doing in the king’s apartments, be- 
hind a door, with a poniard in your hand. 
Further, my Bactrian slaves, the copper- 
colored mutes who imprisoned you a short 
time ago, guard all the issues of the palace, 
with orders to massacre you should you at- 
tempt to go out. Therefore let no vain 
scruples of fidelity cause you to hesitate. 
Think that I will make you King of Sardes, 
and that ... I will love you if you avenge 
me. The blood of Candaules will be your 
purple, and his death will make for you a 
place in that bed.” 

The slaves came according to their custom 


KING CANDAULES 


377 


to change the fuel in the tripod, renew the 
oil in the lamps, spread tapestry and the 
skins of animals upon the royal couch ; and 
Nyssia hurried into the chamber as soon as 
she heard their footsteps resounding in the 
distance. 

In a short time Candaules arrived all joy- 
ous. He had purchased the bed of Ikmalius 
and proposed to substitute it for the bed 
wrought after the Oriental fashion, which he 
declared had never been much to his taste. 
He seemed pleased to find that Nyssia had 
already retired to the nuptial chamber. 

“ The trade of embroidery, and spindles, 
and needles seems not to have the same at- 
traction for you to-day as usual. In fact, it 
is a monotonous labor to perpetually pass 
one thread between other threads, and I 
wonder at the pleasure which you seem or- 
dinarily to take in it. To tell the truth, I 
am afraid that some fine day Pallas-Athena, 
on finding you so skilful, will break her shut- 
tle over your head as she once did to poor 
Arachne.’' 

“ My lord, I felt somewhat tired this even- 
ing, and so came down-stairs sooner than 


378 


KING CANDAULES 


usual. Would you not like before going to 
sleep to drink a cup of black Samian wine 
mixed with the honey of Hymettus ? ’ ’ And 
she poured from a golden urn, into a cup of 
the same metal, the sombre-colored bever- 
age which she had mingled with the soporif- 
erous juice of the nepenthe. 

Candaules took the cup by both handles 
and drained it to the last drop; but the 
young Heracleid had a strong head, and 
sinking his elbow into the cushions of his 
couch he watched Nyssia undressing with- 
out any sign that the dust of sleep was com- 
mencing to gather upon his eyes. 

As on the evening before, Nyssia unfast- 
ened her hair and permitted its rich blonde 
waves to ripple over her shoulders. From 
his hiding-place Gyges fancied that he saw 
those locks slowly becoming suffused with 
tawny tints, illuminated with reflections of 
blood and flame ; and their heavy curls 
seemed to lengthen with viperine undula- 
tions, like the hair of the Gorgons and Me- 
dusas. 

All simple and graceful as that action was 
in itself, it took from the terrible events 


KING CANDAULES 


379 


about to transpire a frightful and ominous 
character, which caused the hidden assassin 
to shudder with terror. 

Nyssia then unfastened her bracelets, but, 
agitated as her hands had been by' nervous 
straining, they ill served her will. She broke 
the string of a bracelet of beads of amber 
inlaid with gold, which rolled over the floor 
with a loud noise, causing Candaules to re- 
open his gradually closing eyes. 

Each one of those beads fell upon the 
heart of Gyges as a drop of molten lead falls 
upon water. 

Having unlaced her buskins, the queen 
threw her upper tunic over the back of an 
ivory chair. This drapery, thus arranged, 
produced upon Gyges the effect of one of 
those sinister-folding winding sheets wherein 
the dead were wrapped ere being borne to 
the funeral pyre. Every object in that 
room, which had the evening before seemed 
to him one scene of smiling splendor, now 
appeared to him livid, dim, and menacing. 
The statues of basalt rolled their eyes and 
smiled hideously. The lamp flickered 
weirdly, and its flame dishevelled itself in 


38 o 


KING CANDAULES 


red and sanguine rays like the crest of a 
comet. Far back in the dimly lighted cor- 
ners loomed the monstrous forms of the 
Lares and Lemures. The mantles hanging 
from their hooks seemed animated by a fac- 
titious life, and assumed a human aspect of 
vitality; and when Nyssia, stripped of her 
last garment, approached the bed, all white 
and naked as a shade, he thought that Death 
herself had broken the diamond fetters 
wherewith Hercules of old enchained her at 
the gates of hell when he delivered Alcestes, 
and had come in person to take possession 
of Candaules. 

Overcome by the power of the nepenthe- 
juice, the king at last slumbered. Nyssia 
made a sign for Gyges to come forth from 
his retreat ; and, laying her finger upon the 
breast of the victim, she directed upon her 
accomplice a look so humid, so lustrous, so 
weighty with languishment, so replete with 
intoxicating promise, that Gyges, maddened 
and fascinated, sprang from his hiding-place 
like the tiger from the summit of the rock 
where it has been crouching, traversed the 
chamber at a bound, and plunged the Bac- 


KING CANDAULES 


381 


trian poniard up to the very hilt in the heart 
of the descendant of Hercules. The chas- 
tity of Nyssia was avenged, and the dream 
of Gyges accomplished. 

Thus ended the dynasty of the Hera- 
cleidae, after having endured for five hun- 
dred and five years, and commenced that of 
the Mermnades in the person of Gyges, son 
of Dascylus. The Sardians, indignant at 
the death of Candaules, threatened revolt; 
but the oracle of Delphi having declared in 
favor of Gyges, who had sent thither a vast 
number of silver vases and six golden cratera 
of the value of thirty talents, the new king 
maintained his seat on the throne of Lydia, 
which he occupied for many long years, lived 
happily, and never showed his wife to any 
one, knowing too well what it cost. 



ADDENDA 


“ ONE OF CLEOPATRA’S NIGHTS ” 

A. There is no correct English plural of “ ne- 
cropolis ” ; the French word nicropole is more 
normal. As the Greek plural could not be used very 
euphoniously, and as I have tried throughout to 
render an exact English equivalent for each French 
word whenever comprehensible, I beg indulgence 
for the illegitimate plural “ necropoli,” used to sig- 
nify more than one necropolis, as an equivalent for 
the French necropoles. 

B. In the opening scene of “ One of Cleopatra’s 
Nights,” the reader may be surprised at the expres- 
sion “ the chuckling of the crocodiles.” Our own 
southern alligators often make a little noise which 
could not be better described — alow, guttural sound, 
bearing a sinister resemblance to a human chuckle 
or subdued, sneering laugh. A Creole friend who 
has lived much in those regions of Southern Louisi- 
ana intersected by bayous and haunted by alligators, 
comprehended at once the whole force of the term 


384 


ADDENDA 


rire itouffe as applied to the sounds made by the 
crocodile. “ Je Vai entendu souvent"' he said, with 
a smile. 

“ CLARIMONDE ” 

The idea of love after death has been introduced 
by Gautier into several beautiful creations, some- 
times Hoffmanesquely, sometimes with an exquisite 
sweetness peculiarly his own. Among his most 
touching poems there is a fantastic — Les Tdches 
Jaunes — so remarkable that I cannot refrain from 
offering a rude translation of it. Though trans- 
planted even by a master-hand into the richest soil 
of another language, such poetical flora necessarily 
lose something of their strange color and magical 
perfume. In this instance the translator, who is no 
poet, only strives to convey the beautiful weirdness 
of the original idea : 

With elbow buried in the downy pillow 
I’ve lain and read, 

All through the night, a volume strangely written 
In tongues long dead. 

For at my bedside lie no dainty slippers ; 

And, save my own. 

Under the paling lamp I hear no breathing ; — 

I am alone ! 

But there are yellow bruises on my body 
And violet stains ; 

Though no white vampire came with lips blood-crimsoned 
To suck my veins ! 


ADDENDA 


385 


Now I bethink me of a sweet weird story, 

That in the dark 

Our dead loves thus with seal of chilly kisses 
Our bodies mark. 

Gliding beneath the coverings of our couches 
They share our rest, 

And with their dead lips sign their loving visit 
On arm and breast. 

Darksome and cold the bed where now she slumbers, 

I loved in vain. 

With sweet soft eyelids closed, to be reopened 
Never again. 

Dead sweetheart, can it be that thou hast lifted 
With thy frail hand 

Thy cofl5n-lid, to come to me again 
From Shadowland? 

Thou who, one joyous night, didst, pale and speechless, 
Pass from us all, 

Dropping thy silken mask and gift of flowers 
Amidst the ball? 

Oh, fondest of my loves, from that far heaven 
Where thou must be. 

Hast thou returned to pay the debt of kisses 
Thou owest me? 

“ARRIA MARCELLA” 

Gautier doubtless obtained inspiration for this 

exquisite romance from an old Greek ghost story, 

25 


386 


ADDENDA 


first related by Phlegon, the freedman of Hadrian. 
Versions of it were current in the twelfth and six- 
teenth centuries; and Goethe reproduced it in his 
“Bride of Corinth.’^ We offer a translation from the 
brief version of Michelet, who accuses Goethe of bad 
taste for having introduced the Slavic idea of vam- 
pirism into a pmrely Greek story. 

* 

* * 

A young Athenian goes to Corinth to visit the 
house of the man who has promised him his daugh- 
ter in marriage. He has always remained a pagan, 
and does not know that the family into which he 
hopes to enter has been converted to Christianity. 
He arrives at a very late hour. All are in bed 
except the mother, who prepares a hospitable repast 
for him, and then leaves him to repose. He throws 
himself upon a couch, overwhelmed with fatigue. 
Scarcely has he closed his eyes, when a figure enters 
the room; it is a girl, all clad in white, with a white 
veil; there is a black-and-gold fillet about her brows. 
She beholds him. Astonishment! Lifting her white 
hand, she exclaims: 

“Am I then such a stranger in the house? Alas! 
poor recluse that I am! But I am ashamed to be 
here. I shall now depart. Repose in peace !’^ 

“Nay, remain, beautiful young girl! Behold! 
here are Ceres, Bacchus, and, with thee. Love! Fear 
not! be not so pale!” 

“Ah! touch me not, young man! I belong no 
more to joy. Through a vow made by my sick 


ADDENDA 


387 


mother, my youth and life are fettered forever. The 
gods have fled away. And now the only sacrifices 
are sacrifices of human victims.” 

“What! is it thou! thou, my beloved affianced, 
betrothed to me from childhood! The oath of our 
fathers bound us together forever under the benedic- 
tion of heaven! Oh, virgin, be mine!” 

“Nay, friend, nay! — not I. Thou shalt have my 
young sister. If I sigh in my chill prison, thou 
mayst, at least, while in her arms, think of me, of 
me who pines and thinks only of thee, and whom the 
earth must soon cover again.” 

“Never! I swear it by this flame, it is the torch 
of Hymen. Thou shalt come with me to my father’s 
house. Remain, my well-beloved!” 

For marriage-gift he offers her a cup of gold. 
She gives him her chain; but prefers a lock of his 
hair to the cup. 

It is the ghostly hour. She sips with her pale lips 
the dark wine that is the color of blood. Eagerly 
he drinks after her. He invokes Love. She, though 
her poor heart was dying for it, nevertheless resists 
him. But he, in despair, casts himself upon the bed 
and weeps. Then she, flinging herself down beside 
him, murmurs: 

“Ah! how much hurt they pain causes me! Yet 
shouldst thou touch me — what horror! White as 
snow, cold as ice, alas! is thy betrothed!” 

“I shall warm thee, love! come to me! even though 
thou hadst but this moment left the tomb. . . .” 

Sighs and kisses are exchanged. . . . Love 


388 


ADDENDA 


binds and fetters them. Tears mingle with happi- 
ness. Thirstily she drinks the fire of his lips; her 
long-congealed blood takes flame with amorous mad- 
ness, yet no heart beats in her breast. 

But the mother was there; listening. Sweet vows; 
cries of plaint and pleasure. ^‘Hush,” says the 
bride; “I hear the cock crow! Farewell, till to- 
morrow, after nightfall.” Then adieu, and the sound 
of kisses smothering kisses. 

Indignant, the mother enters. What does she 
behold! Her daughter! He seeks to hide her — to 
veil her! But she disengages herself; and waxing 
taller, towers from the couch to the roof. 

“0, mother, mother! dost thou then envy me my 
sweet night? dost thou seek to drive me from this 
warm place? Was it not enough to have wrapped 
me in the shroud, and borne me so early to the tomb! 
But there was a power that lifted the stone! Vainly 
did thy priests hum above my grave. What avail 
salt and water where youth burns? The earth may 
not chill love. . . . Thou didst promise me to 
this youth. ... I come to claim my right. 

“Alack! friend, thou must die. Here thou must 
pine and wither away. I possess thy hair; to-mor- 
row it shall be white. . . . Mother, a last prayer! 

Open my black dungeon; erect a funeral pyre; and 
let the sweetheart obtain the repose that only flames 
can give. Let the sparks gush out, let the ashes 
redden! We return to our ancient gods .” — [La 
Sorcihre, pages 32-34; edition of 1863. 












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